WHAT TO SPOT
Natural wonders to watch out for this week…
Mad as a March hare, so the old saying goes, and now – smack bang in the middle of the breeding season – they are prancing about with reckless abandon.
I have seen four hares in the past week, although sadly none doing the hind-leg boxing routine for which the famous idiom was coined. The boxing, by the way, is female hares literally fighting off the unwanted attention of amorous males coming too close to them. Even though they only fight with their front paws it can turn vicious; pulling out tufts of fur in the process.
One of the hares I spotted loping across a country lane while I was out cycling and the rest were racing across open moorland. They were all brown hares but in the Peak District and Scotland it is also possible to see snowy white mountain hares, although sadly they are becoming increasingly rare.
Hares are noticeably different from rabbits due to their long ears and powerful back legs which can propel them at up to 45mph. This astonishing turn of speed makes them Britain’s fastest land mammal.
Look for them on any large open expanse of farmland, grassland or moor. The wide plains of Suffolk, Norfolk and Cambridgeshire are a stronghold for brown hares, as are the Marlborough Downs in Wiltshire.
They are largely crepuscular animals and most active at dawn and dusk. By day they rest up in depressions in the ground from which they can make a quick getaway if disturbed.
Hares are solitary creatures, unlike rabbits which cluster together in underground warrens. Perhaps because of this aloofness they occupy a mysterious place in folklore. Centuries ago a lone sighting of a hare was seen as an ill portent. There is a similar popular legend of the soul of a jilted maiden returning in the form of a white hare to stalk her former lover.
Certainly there is something ethereal about every hare encounter, not least in the speed at which it will streak away.
Hares are in fact non-native species introduced to Britain by the Romans. While the once popular recipe of jugged hare, in which the animal is stewed in wine and juniper berries and served marinated in its own blood, has virtually disappeared from our tables the population is still recording some alarming declines in the modern age.
The overall British brown hare population is believed to have fallen from four million in 1880 to around 800,000 today.
There are few good estimates for mountain hare numbers, but scientists believe the population is currently at just one per cent of its 1950s level.
Changing land use, an increase of pesticides and illegal hare coursing are all blamed for having an impact on this decline, as well as over-zealous control of the species by gamekeepers.
For that reason the Government is currently contemplating introducing a close season for hares, meaning they cannot be shot between January and August, and bringing in an outright ban on shooting mountain hares at any time of year.
Hare today, gone tomorrow is the fear over their continued decline if something is not done to preserve them. Perhaps the explanation of the recent abundance of hares in my local patch is they can sniff the impending armistice as well as a potential partner in the spring air?