March 2023 Round Up
March is a great time to photograph Brown Hare in Britain as they are actively seeking out a mate during early Spring, and crucially vegetation is yet to grow too much, making them easier to spot.
March, is for me, the best month in the year for photographing Brown Hare, so from the start of the year I had planned that I would spend all of March trying to build my portfolio of images. Living partly in France and partly in the UK I was pleased to say I would be in the UK for the whole month, and I could dedicate some time to this new project.
Last month (whilst photographing Otters) I met a chap who gave me a tip off of a good site relatively close to home on the edge of Cheltenham. He told me of a group of fields on the Cotswold escarpment, where he had been the previous Sunday and had been presented with 14 Hares in front of his camera at the same time! It sounded too good to be true, so in early March I set off for an afternoon’s recce. After parking “Betty” the 4x4 in a layby, and grabbing my kit, I headed off in the direction he had given me, and sure enough almost immediately I saw 2 Hares in the field next to where I was parked, sat about 40ft away and munching on the grass. They were a little skittish , but perfectly photographable had I been in position a little earlier in the day.
The area I had been directed to, is a series of large fields and small woods, interlaced with sunken single track lanes more akin to Devon than Gloucestershire, with the only thing making them look distinctly Gloucestershire being tumbledown Cotswold stone walls along some of the road edges. This is typical Brown Hare country, with plenty of open countryside, and shelter for when the winds and rain get too much. The area, as promised by my fellow photographer, is a great site for photography and that afternoon I watched at least 8 Hares, and was able to get relatively close to them using some public footpaths, and the sunken lanes between the fields, with the stone walls as cover. All was looking good………..
Some of you may recall that March was more than a little wet :-) and with the site being very high on the Cotswold escarpment, often the rain here was in fact snow or hail! So, despite visiting the same site on 8 or 9 occasions during March, I actually was unable to do very little in the way of photography, as even between dowpours the light was terrible, which is not good for catching Hares racing around in pursuit of love. The site is also about 45 minutes from home which meant I often didn’t have a good view of the weather on the escarpment until I was 30 minutes into the journey :-(
Anyway, a combination of terrible weather and “Betty” (the aforementioned 4x4) having a major engine issue late in the month, meant my Hare output was much less than I had hoped for. Here’s a few to give you a flavour of what I did mange:
On the plus side, I did have a couple of unexpected opportunities to watch and photograph species I hadn’t planned on seeing. The most notable was I had the opportunity to watch a Peregrine Falcon hunting on one of the drier days, which was fantastic but alas too distant to get on camera. Muntjac Deer were plentiful, as were Red Kite which seemed to appear most afternoons.
Lots of Deer wander between the fields and woods in the Cotswolds and I was given a couple of good opportunities to photograph the Reeves Muntjac that live in the same area as the Brown Hares.
There is also a very healthy population of Red Kite breeding on the escarpment.
So my favourite shot of the month was relatively easy for me to choose, as I had the idea for this image in my mind from when I started the project………a silhouetted Hare with a sunset behind. I found a couple of likely hills that the Hare were using, and after several visits and hours waiting I eventually got lucky with this Hare coming over the crest of the hill a few minutes after the rain had stopped.
…..and in terms of “Commercial shot of the month” this head on photo of one of the Brown Hare will likely be the most commercially useful image taken in March.
Looking forward to next month, April will be a very different prospect as we will be at our place in France for the whole month, and as its been 3 or 4 months since I have been there, I will be very much back in a leaning process, getting to know what species are visiting the garden and field. Previously we have had Barn Owls, Foxes, Badgers, Pine and Beech Martens, Roe Deer, and European Wildcat all visiting on a regular basis which has given plenty of opportunity for photography. However, none of them are guaranteed visitors, and the feeding stations have been empty for many weeks, so I will need to get them used to food being available and my scent being around before they start to ignore our presence a little. During April I intend to continue to fiddle with my Camtraptions DSLR camera trap and try and get some decent night time shots, so expect to see a write up about that once we are back from France. Until then, keep clicking!