Vulpes silvestris prope gallinas venire solet.

Because soleo normally takes an infinitive. In venire solet, the form solet carries the person, number, and tense, while venire names the action.

So the structure is:

• solet = is accustomed
• venire = to come

Together, venire solet means is accustomed to come, or more naturally in English, usually comes.

Solet is the 3rd person singular present indicative of soleo, solere, meaning to be accustomed or to usually do something.

It is singular because the subject, vulpes, is singular. The present tense gives a habitual idea: this is something the fox does regularly, not just once.

Venit simply means comes or is coming (and in some contexts can also mean came).

Venire solet adds the idea of habit:

• venit = comes / is coming
• venire solet = usually comes / tends to come / is accustomed to come

So solet is what makes the action habitual.

Because prope is a preposition that takes the accusative.

So:

• prope = near
• gallinas = accusative plural of gallina

Even though near feels like a location idea in English, Latin simply requires the accusative after prope.

The subject is the noun phrase vulpes silvestris.

Here is why:

• vulpes is nominative singular
• silvestris matches it in case, number, and gender
• solet is also singular

So the sentence is built around one singular subject: the wild fox or a wild fox.

Because silvestris is a third-declension adjective. Its masculine and feminine nominative singular form is the same: silvestris.

So although vulpes is feminine, the correct agreeing adjective here is still silvestris, not silvestra.

That is different from first/second-declension adjectives like bonus, bona, bonum, where the feminine would have a different ending.

Yes. Vulpes is grammatically feminine.

In Latin, grammatical gender does not always match biological sex. So a noun can be feminine as a word even when the actual animal could be male or female. That is normal Latin grammar.

No, it does not have to. Latin word order is much freer than English word order.

Both noun + adjective and adjective + noun are possible. So:

• vulpes silvestris
• silvestris vulpes

can both work.

In this sentence, putting the adjective after the noun is perfectly natural Latin.

Because Classical Latin has no articles.

So vulpes can mean:

• the fox
• a fox
• simply fox

depending on context.

The same applies to gallinas: it can mean the hens or just hens, depending on what the context suggests.

Because Latin often puts the main verb near the end, especially in simple prose.

English relies heavily on word order, but Latin relies much more on endings. Since the forms already show what each word is doing, Latin can arrange words more flexibly.

So Vulpes silvestris prope gallinas venire solet is normal Latin word order, even though English would usually say something like The wild fox usually comes near the hens.