Mad March Hares

Even smallholders have days off.

Mothering Sunday. Time for some self-indulgence.  A day off, doing what I fancied doing. So, the lawn, or what passes for the lawn lay uncut, and the oven stayed dirty and once I had fed and watered ducks and chickens and sheep I packed up my rucksack and slipped quietly through the gate and off for a walk. I took sandwiches, binoculars, a waterproof and a four-legged accomplice. As I sneaked away from the house a small voice echoed inside my head; but you have potatoes to plant and that area you dunged in the autumn needs rotovating. But I wasn’t listening because this was a special walk, a challenge, something I had promised myself I would do.

It had started on holiday last year when, driving back at dusk to the cottage we had rented on Orkney, a hare had run across the track in front of the car, the first hare I had seen for thirty years (give or take a century). The easy gait as it bounded along the road until it disappeared into a break in the fence, the sleek body, long back legs, the dark line of the ears, had touched something primeval deep down inside. Rabbits may be cute and cuddly and bright eyed, but there is something mysterious, magical about hares. One sighting wasn’t enough. I wanted to see another one and at my age I don’t have another thirty years to wait.

I bored everyone with the hare when I returned, including an old farming friend who smiled indulgently and told me where I could see them not much more than three miles from home. ‘Here in Sussex?’ I had repeated. He had nodded. So, I made myself a promise that before March (appropriately) was out I would take off in search of hares.

The walk took me down towards the river and then up over the top of the Downs into a clear blue sky that spread for miles across open countryside and softly merged with the sea to the south. By the river, the footpath had been sheltered from the sharp wind blowing from the east by a hedgerow dipped in the snowy white of blackthorn blossom. On the top I walked into the wind. On either side of the footpath stretched green fields of grazing sheep and brown stubble fields that would soon be ploughed and sown again with corn.

Perfect habitat for hares which like open grassland, flat wetland, and arable farm land. What I was looking for as I stopped to scan the open down land was a ‘form’, a shallow nest in the grass scratched out by a brown hare literally lying low sheltering from the wind. Rabbits are easy to spot from a distance because they are social animals. Hares are normally solitary creatures that only come together at certain times of the year. And this was the right time of year.  Around the Spring Equinox nature sends out some mysterious signal, that brings the hares together. The females or Jills stay in one area all their lives while the males (yes you guessed it; the Jacks) range over long distances but once they meet up the partying begins. They are nocturnal creatures and it is often at dusk that they can be seen chasing each other around fields, leap frogging in the air, rolling wildly in the grass and boxing as the moon rises above the earth. The boxing was always assumed to be males competing for females but it is now believed to be a battle between males and females; possibly the females are seeing off unwanted attention or maybe they are testing the fitness of potential mates. 

‘Mad March Hares’. 

It was probably too early to see leverets. Sometimes people stumble across baby hares and mistakenly think they have been abandoned but they are independent of their mothers from the beginning. They are born with fur and their eyes wide open, ready to go. The female or the ‘Jill’ makes a form for each of her offspring and ‘visits’ them, feeding and moving between them but living alone in her own form.

Anyway, I wasn’t expecting to see boxing hares or leverets. All I wanted was to see A hare.

And it was half way up a long haul to the top of the hill, along a narrow stony, footpath, enclosed by wind-blown hawthorn that I spotted a brown shape in the middle of the grassy field on my left. It was a long way off. I rummaged in my rucksack and found my binoculars. The dog wandered further on and stopped, waiting. As I focused I found the wind made it difficult to hold the ‘bins’ still and it’s sting made my eyes water. I could make out what looked like a brown rock with something black laid flat across the top of it. Ears? Was that an eye I could see? I propped the binoculars on top of a fencing post to steady them and looked again. The dog got bored, fixed a questioning eye on me, as I refocused. Was I looking at a hare or was my imagination playing tricks? I so wanted it to be a hare. After a long time, I decided it was a brown rock with black markings.  

I walked on, the dog walked on. I was almost at the top of the hill when I picked up another brown shape amongst the grass on the side hill. Binoculars again. Just in range. I held my breath. This looked like another rock, brown against the green of the grass around it and there, along the top of it, were streaks of black.

Coincidence? Impossible.

I was looking at my second hare.