Highland Insider

This is the time of year when I get the best views of the brown hares that live near the cottage. 

They must go elsewhere in the territory for their spring boxing games, but in summer I often see one, or a pair, enjoying long lazy suppers on the west-facing slope of the field across the dry-stone wall. They appear in the evening when it’s dry and the shadows are long; they choose their spot, and settle down for hours at a time, nibbling the grass and taking occasional breaks for a wash and brush-up.

Luckily for me, this peaceful scene is perfectly framed by my bedroom window, so I can indulge in watching the hares without being eaten alive by the midges. They look surprisingly small when they’re huddled up for grazing; those great long legs folded away and the whole body hunched into a greyish brown mound that easily passes for a rock to the casual observer. It’s an effective camouflage, although apart from foxes not many local predators would attempt an adult hare. The young ones might be at risk from pine marten and stoats, but they are kept well hidden; I’ve never seen a really tiny leveret.

I once had a magical encounter with what was probably a teenage one, though. I was sitting very still on a bench on a farm lane, not looking for hares or anything else, just enjoying the view and the evening, (away in a dream, to be honest), when a gangly, shy-looking young creature crept to within six feet of my boots before it noticed me. When it did see me it whisked round and skedaddled in seconds, but I had a wonderful few minutes watching its long, intelligent face and outsize feet first.

It’s a shame we’ve all but lost the old Scots word for the hare, murchen. It survives in place names and surnames, but I’ve never heard it used in conversation. I see lots of wildlife from the cottage, but the hares exert an almost magnetic pull on me. There is an aura about them; a look of calm intelligence, almost wisdom, that separates them from the daft rabbits they’re so often mistaken for, as surely as their longer ears and darker tails.

Even when they’re making a dash into cover they look completely self-possessed and are never less than graceful. Well, maybe in spring, when they let their hair down and bounce around the fields, boxing. But sadly, I don’t see that from my bedroom window.

Tags: garden, Scottish wildlife

This entry was posted on Monday, June 30th, 2008 at 1:00 pm and is filed under An inside view of the Highlands, The wild side. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.