Saturday 26 February 2011

Hares

The land to the west of the A34 is privately owned farm land, but a footpath near Marcham Mill - (Marcham Jubilee Walk), allows members of the public to explore this area and observe an animal that appears to be absent from the east of the A34 - the brown hare.
.
.
Superficially like a rabbit, the most obvious differences are the long ears and longer legs.  
Unlike rabbits they don't have burrows, instead they can spend daylight hours in a shallow depression in the ground (called a form),  making them harder to see.
.
.
But maybe it's the lack of dogs along the path, but they don't spend look like this and are fairly easy to see. They also don't seem to be too concerned about the frequent buzzards that pass overhead.
Unlike rabbits, they are not social animals, but when territories overlap they can be seen in small collectives (known as a mute of hares!!):

.
What hares are famous for is the 'boxing' that takes place in March, this when an unreceptive females fights off the unwanted advances of a hopeful male and is a very entertaining sight and like snowdrops mean spring is not too far away.
.

5 comments:

  1. We have hares in our school grounds (Leicester). We've had one run through a cricket match before now. The children all shouted 'Rabbit! Rabbit!' until my six year old daughter told them it was 'Actually, a hare'

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hi Ellen and welcome to my blog.
    They did seem pretty mad, hopefully I'll get a chance to get out there again during March and maybe get a film of them boxing.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Hi Rachel,
    Good to hear from you again. I'm very impressed with your daughter, not sure at the age of six if I could have spotted the difference between a rabbit and a hare.

    ReplyDelete