Tag Archives: predation

nature

Testing Time for Baby Bunnies!

Peeping out from the edge of our yard, this baby rabbit can hear the incessant screeches of the young buzzard, calling from the top of the oak tree behind the house.

The parent birds circle overhead looking for prey to shut up the chick who is probably almost as big as they are by now. They see the little rabbits and if they get desperate enough they will swoop low around the house and carry one off in their talons but they prefer to hunt in the fields and woods at a safer distance from human habitation.

So these little chaps can dash about in relative safety, exploring underneath the cars by the house, annoying the house sparrows and occasionally meeting a mirror image. Sniffing as they go.

They are nesting under our wood pile and are in for a shock as Ali and Dan are coming soon with the dogs and suddenly everything will be smelling a lot scarier!

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Birds, Wales

Beautiful, Callous Killer gets her comeuppance?

Here she is under a strangely blue sky, for Wales– Mother Magpie, unlikely heroine of my last blog — fighting to save her two (there may have been more) fledglings. They are both alive and she and Father Magpie are still feeding them. The Sun is still shining:

This is one of the chicks — having a flying lesson with Mum, fully fledged but smaller than the adults and with a shorter tail. At night they roost close to their original nest, next to the telegraph pole.

But look at this —

Last evening at dusk, not 10 meters from our door, waiting for the light to finally fade — Tawny Owl bides her time.

While we blustered about trying to find the tripod, she flew away and this morning the head count was the same — but she’ll be back!

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animal psychology, Ecology

The Cynic and the Bunny

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Here’s the Bunny — he’s started hanging around our yard — not very sensible as you know we have killer cats who eat a baby rabbit  a day at this time of year.  This bunny is larger than the ones they usually catch but he would still fit through the cat-flap so he’d better look out.

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He sits (he could be a she)  and he watches (can you see that his eyes are arranged like a sheep’s, so that he can see almost all around himself) so he knows I’m there — clomping up behind him in my wellies.  He doesn’t lollop off until the dog bounds up to sniff him.

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Off he lollops with his bobtail flashing

Pedro, the dog, can kill rabbits, but all he wants to do with this one is sniff it — perhaps he needs to know exactly what it is as it is behaving in such a peculiar way — this bold bunny.

When Pedro was young he used to bring in live baby rabbits, we called them punk rabbits as he licked their fur into spikes, he would put them down in front of us and cock his head enquiringly, ‘ Can we keep it?’ he seemed to ask.  They were all liberated into the big outdoors and probably eaten by the unsentimental buzzard — ‘This rabbit tastes odd!’

Next time I see the bold bunny, I’m inclined to feed it some sheep nuts; perhaps this is how rabbits were domesticated or, more likely, it’s a sick rabbit — it’s wits dimmed by disease and protected from predation by the instinct of predators not to eat infected meat (unless they really have to).

It doesn’t seem to have any features of myxomatosis, its eyes are clear and not running with pus, it has no obvious tumours, though now I come to think of it, that cheek is rather chubby.  British rabbits are supposed to be getting some degree of resistance to myxomatosis which we haven’t seen since we’ve lived here but I still remember the short-lived delight I had as a child — being able to run up to a furry creature and it not to run away and my mother’s panicky ‘Don’t touch it!’

Perhaps I will offer it some sheep nuts if I see it again — you never know — hope might triumph over cynicism, just occasionally.

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