Hard At It.

I had never seen hares mating before.

What with various amphibians, mammals and birds feeling the spirit of spring coursing through their veins, I have recently been placed in uncomfortably voyeuristic positions before mating frogs, black grouse and woodpigeons. Only the frogs have been featured on this blog in photographic form because I wanted to avoid building the unsettling reputation as the purveyor of animal pornography, but I came across something today which I couldn’t help finding extremely interesting.

Two brown hares ran beside the car as I drove up to the Chayne, and as they suddenly stopped a few feet away, I realised that I was looking first hand at the creation of this summer’s leverets. I took a series of photographs as the female ran ahead of the male in a large figure of eight, stopping to mate briefly every thirty or forty yards. She finally decided that the engagement was over and sprinted away over the brow of the hill, leaving the male looking very pleased with himself.

It was only when I got home that I realised I had taken one or two very revealing photographs, and one in particular shows the buck’s (for lack of a better word) willy, hanging out in a downturned curve. I never thought that I was much of a prude, but I decided to use a different photograph to illustrate this article for fear of causing blushes amongst my generous readership. If anyone would like to see the aforementioned photograph, I would be happy to send it to them, but I took an executive decision and decided that a photo of a hare’s grotesquely pink willy is a little too fruity for this blog.