Brown hares could well be thriving after all

rown hares used to be such a regular sight on our farmland – graceful, bonny animals, the very embodiment of the wild.

I hadn’t seen a brown hare in the fields in our part of Mearns for some little while, so there was a real sense of excitement when I saw a solitary animal sitting out on plough, surveying its world.

I stopped the car and put the binoculars on him. They are animals of the open fields and rely for survival on camouflage, good eyesight and hearing, and great speed from their long, powerful hind quarters to escape predators.

He was far enough out in the field not to be alarmed but, ever on the alert for danger, the long, black-tipped radar ears flicked back and forth receiving and decoding every subtle sound. Hares are our fastest land mammal, capable of nearly 50mph flat out. This one would have been over the hill and far away if I had moved out of the car to get nearer for a photo.

About 40 years ago their numbers began to decline rapidly. Changes in agricultural practice were said to be responsible.

It is certainly true that there was a move away from the traditional mixed farming enterprises of cereals, root crops and livestock which provided the ideal environment for hares, and a move to intensive arable or livestock production.

It led to larger fields to accommodate larger machinery, and the loss of headlands and hedgerows and tidying up of small areas of woodland, all of which were important daytime lying-up habitats, as hares are mainly nocturnal feeders. And they lost the variety of cover where they could raise their leverets, which are born fully furred and with their eyes open.

Farming has been blamed for a number of the countryside’s ills, but if we want food on our tables we need to accept change and improvements in methods.

I’m not sure that a definitive answer for the hares’ decline has ever been given and I’ve wondered if farming really was the whole story because the decline was so rapid.

An increase in foxes has been suggested, but the increase has been in recent years, not 40 years ago.

It used to be said that five hares ate as much as one sheep and many farmers regarded them as vermin, much as they did rabbits which were many times more destructive. Estates held organised hare shoots and their numbers appeared to hold up in spite of the shoots, which ceased only when the drop in numbers became evident.

Their numbers have slowly recovered, though I doubt they will return to their previous level in my lifetime.

And as an ecological aside, there used to be a colony of ginger hares on Kinnaber Moor on the outskirts of Montrose. But I reckon their hybrid strain died out, as I have heard nothing of them for many years.

The brown hare was an introduction into Britain by the Romans, but our mountain white hares are native to Scotland.

My father referred to them as blue hares in summer when their grey coat has a bluish tinge, perfect camouflage in heather moorland. Like the brown species they have big eyes set well back on the head for maximum vision, big radar ears for good hearing and great speed to escape predators. In winter, their coat turns almost completely white to camouflage them in snow – only their ear tips stay black.

There has been much recent discussion about the apparent severe decline in their numbers.

There’s no question that in some parts, particularly where formerly keepered grouse moors have been turned over to forestry, their numbers are significantly down.

I’m told too that where moors have been rewilded – leaving nature to her own devices – there is scarcely a white hare to be seen.

An answer to the concerns may lie in the methods used to count white hares on the ground. Until recently, gamekeepers made daylight counts that produced unhappy results.

A new methodology developed by the James Hutton Institute, Scotland’s leading scientific research institute, the Game and Wildlife Conservation Trust and Scottish Natural Heritage and commissioned by the Scottish Government – there can’t be any suggestion of undue bias among these organisations – has produced startling results.

Where a daylight count on a specific grid found six hares, a night count with torches found 209 on the same grid, completely confounding the previous gloomy picture.

Perhaps nightght time counts of f brown hares, when they are most active, would produce a much more accurate picture of their population.

I might find out that I’m just not seeing what’s right under my nose.

Picture: Angus Whitson.