Читать книгу The Times A Year in Nature Notes - Derwent May - Страница 81

MAD MARCH HARES are out in the fields. They rise up on their back legs and box with each other. These pairs of pugilists were long thought to be bucks fighting each other, but now it is believed that they are generally a female hare fighting off the attentions of a male.

At any event, this is the mating season for hares, and the females, or does, will soon give birth to three or four leverets. Unlike young rabbits, these are born above ground without the protection of a hole. They lie in hollows in the grass or green corn all day, and their mother comes back to suckle them at night. Many of them are caught by foxes.

Badgers already have small cubs in their setts, which can be whole underground palaces of tunnels and sleeping chambers. The parents have dozed away much of the winter, but now they are coming out to dig for earthworms, and to snap up any other food they can find, from nuts and fungi to frogs and young rabbits. The cubs stay below in their bed of dry grass, waiting for their mother’s milk. They will venture forth in April, and then will soon start fending for themselves.