Regular readers of my blog will know that I love hares. The rabbit’s bigger. scrawnier cousin, hares are easily recognised by their large, black-tipped ears. I think the reason I like them so much is that hares are tough. Rabbits dig burrows to shelter in: hares scrape a shallow depression in the ground (called a “form”) and then just sit there and take it. Blizzards, torrential downpours, heatwaves – the hare is exposed to it all. Brown hare Now hares …
Category: mammals
It’s said that humans like kittens and other young animals in part because we’re programmed to respond to the eyes of babies, which are large in proportion to their small heads when they are born. Large eyes are something we key in on, that arouse our protective instincts. Whether that’s true or not, some animals get an automatic “aaaaah,” rather than an automatic “uuurrrgghhh”. One of those is the doe, the female deer. Is that the reason why I, …
Regular readers will have noted my dilemma a couple of weeks ago about pub names. Well, I know what my (purely hypothetical) pub will be called now, after a visit to my local nature reserve. I’d taken my friend Rob on the promise that we might, just might, see an otter. I’ve seen them on this reserve before, but they are fickle creatures. There have been times when I’ve seen them every day, and others when I’ve spent long hours …
When I was a child there was a pub near our home called the “Fox and Elm”. It had an elm tree outside, with a rather unconvincing plastic fox in it. Dutch Elm disease did for the tree, and I never found out what happened to the fox, but both were gone after a few years. But the practice of naming pubs after animals is common. ‘The Swan’ is England’s fifth most popular pub name, while ‘The Fox’ comes in …
The topsy-turvy weather of late is reflected all around me. In some places the blackthorn is still flowering, in others drift of soft pink petals look like the late snowfalls that keep happening. Yesterday I took my coat off, put my coat on, took my coat off in a regular cycle as we veered from warm and sunny, to frigid winds and sleety showers. At one point hail lay sparkling on roads turned to sugar. Today feels like more of …
Sometimes I set out to see things, and sometimes things just turn up. Today was a bit of both. The thing I’d set out to see was a Garganey. A what? A Garganey. Which despite sounding like something you’d do at the dentist is actually a type of duck. We’re all familiar with the ubiquitous mallard, a bird that doesn’t get the credit it deserves for its brilliant, iridescent colouring simply because it is so well-known. But Britain has (whisper …
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