Hare today

Long before brown hares were brought to the British Isles, most likely by the Romans, they lived in the vast grasslands of easternmost Europe and central Asia. As steppe animals, they evolved to survive extremes of weather with little or no shelter. This explains their remarkable hardiness – hares do not use burrows, but merely hunker down in shallow scrapes called ‘forms’. In winter, they find food by scrabbling snow aside or, if necessary, resort to browsing shrubs, twigs and even bark. Flooding and cold, wet springs are probably more of a threat than snow.

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