Moulting Mountain Hares
A day in the hills with Rebecca, Liam and Amy
Wet but wonderful; a mountain hare mid moult checking us out
Everyone loves a mountain hare. These are our only native leporid (hares and rabbits), as the brown hare and the rabbit were introduced for hunting and food hundreds of years ago. The mountain hare is smaller, and stockier than its cousin and loves to live in the Scottish montane habitat. They are probably my favourite species to track and photograph and whether they’re in their winter white coat or the summer greyish brown, they are such beautiful animals.
I find that my social media is flooded with images of the hare in the winter because they are such a startling white, but I don’t see so many people posting or discussing them in the spring and summer. It’s this reason that I’ve decided to run a few trips out this spring to see the hares as they moult.
Behaviourally, this can be quite tricky. The hares are uncomfortable and much more active than during the winter when all they really want to do is conserve energy. This makes sneaking up on them difficult. On top of this, the number one priority is the comfort of the animal and the last thing you want to be doing during an already stressful period, is spooking hares and making them waste valuable energy running away.
All of this means that it’s important to respect the wildlife and the environment when you’re taking groups out and this is always the first thing I impress upon guests.
Fortunately, this trip I was joined by three utterly delightful individuals who have a profound and genuine knowledge and interest in natural history and Scottish ecology. Liam is a well established photographer who takes breathtaking images of landscapes and wildlife all around the cairngorms, Moray and Aberdeen. Rebecca (who also goes by Rebecca on the Wing) is an author who has written a book, Slow Travel North East Scotland, which helps to bring people closer to nature through exploration of this landscape and wildlife. Finally, I met Amy through a photography course when I first moved up to Scotland. She, her partner and their dog live in Moray enjoying everything it has to offer. She is now a hugely talented photographer and it was such a pleasure meeting up again in the hills!
We met at a very reasonable 9AM which had given me enough time to get up in the hills and locate a number of hares before the guests arrived. The hares, much like us humans don’t like to be exposed to the elements and so on windy and wet days, they are most often found hunkered down on the leeward side of the hill to protect themselves as much as they can. Anyway, I had got up in the hill about an hour early and found a number of hares quite low down on the hillside which meant that we could get pretty close without too much hassle.
The group were very lucky to get onto hare so easily!
The conditions were due to turn for the worse after lunch and so we made a hasty advance onto the hillside, dropped our bags in a small reentrant and then pushed on to a better vantage point. From there, it was onto the belt buckles and crawling slowly forward until we had a good angle; all the time observing the behaviour of the hare we were watching.
This is a crucial thing to mention. When approaching hares there are a few telltale signs that they’re happy or unhappy/nervous. I always say that a happy hare is a grooming hare and this is generally true. If an animal feels comfortable you can usually expect them to be grooming or feeding regularly with ears back and fur puffed up, often with feet tucked underneath them.* Whereas an unhappy or nervous hare will have ears erect, fur will go flat to the body and the head will be up and alert. By watching these tiny changes in the body language of the animal, you can ensure that we’re never upsetting the animal - or at least avoiding it as much as possible.
All three photographers got great shots of this individual!
The group got onto this hare with ease and we enjoyed a few hours of glorious behaviour - shaking, scratching, feeding and… well… snoozing. After a while we decided to leave this individual and move onto another one I had scouted a little up the hill. This was just as the weather was changing and before long we found ourselves in an absolute downpour. The hares hate this as much as we do, but it did make for some very dramatic images!
After lunch, thoroughly saturated but very happy, the group made the executive decision to head down to the cars and warm up at the local coffee shop. A great day all round which was rewarded with some truly stunning images from everyone!
If you or anyone you know might like to join me for a mountain hare photography day then please do get in touch with the form below…
This was probably my best image of the day, I absolutely love the movement in the shot
* Anecdotally my dissertation at university focussed on wood mice and bank voles. The study covered 12 months of capture and release of hundreds of wild caught mice and, during this time, I observed that many of the rodent species would do something called “stress cleaning” which was a response triggered by a perceived threat. This is actually a well documented behaviour which is a form of self soothing thus allowing the rodents to keep a lower overall stress. I have no proof that hares do this too but I don’t know for sure, feel free to correct me!
