26.A final post

It is fitting, in the week that we leave our home in the country, that I should end this blog with a wildlife mystery to rival any that has unfolded so far. One of the final tasks as we prepared to leave our home of thirteen years was to dismantle the playhouse erected three years earlier for our granddaughter. Beneath the wooden structure there was a small store of wheat ears, probably belonging to one of our many mouse neighbours, and the heavy clay soil was dry and solid. To improve its appearance for the new owners, I spent half an hour breaking it up.

The following morning it was clear that something, probably a badger, maybe a fox, had been digging at the heavy soil - there was a large hole in the middle of the plot. What added to the mystery was the fur and straw scattered around the hole.

The mystery hole

It was only after a few minutes of wondering what it all meant that I noticed there was something even more mysterious just to the left of the hole - just visible in the picture above. A closer look at this area revealed a couple of tiny legs sticking out of the soil:

Unfortunately, the owner of the legs, a leveret, was dead but if it hadn't been so cold and unresponsive I would have sworn it was sleeping. The most likely time for hares to mate is in the Spring and after a gestation period of about six weeks two to four leverets will be born in a 'form', a depression in the ground lined with grass and the mother's own fur. Each one will then be placed in a form of its own and the mother will visit them once every night to suckle them.

Unlike rabbits, which are born naked and blind, leverets are born fully furred and with their eyes open. Although this one looked well developed it was almost certainly less than 24 hours old.

There are several questions that I will never know the answers to. Had this area of rough soil been the form in which the mum gave birth? Was she disturbed before she had chance to find this leveret a form of its own, or did she just forget him? If she was disturbed, and the digging and spreading of the fur and straw is highly suspicious, what did the disturbing and why wasn't the leveret eaten? Although he looked as though he were attempting to escape he hadn't got very far! Whatever the answers this was a sad end to Lincolnshire wildlife watching at Willow Farm House. I wonder what North Yorkshire has in store.