Hare Prints - Hare original - watercolour portrait

The brown hare is around 55cm long and weighs around 3.6 - 5kg, with the female weighing slightly more than the male. They live in the open on farmland, spending daytime lying in forms (a shallow depression usually in long grass, heather or rushes). Hares rely on their extraordinary acute hearing to give sufficient warning of predators, and an astonishing turn of speed to escape. Their long hind legs can power them to 35 miles per hour, and to jump a height of 2m. She or Puss (hares are always colloquially referred to as feminine) has a sensitive nose like a rabbit, and a split or hare-lip. They appreciate variety in their diet of grass and cereal crops, mushrooms and shoots and will range for miles in search of a choice morsel: parsley is one of their favourite foods. 

The brown hare is a highly excitable and eccentric animal, which, particularly in spring can behave quite strangely. March is the time of year traditionally associated with the lunatic antics of courting hares, when groups of several males (jack-hares) will pursue a female (doe) in a chaotic free-for-all display. During their dispute over the doe, the jacks have boxing matches when they rise up on their hind legs, box and batter each other with their forepaws. Jack and doe may also have heated and vicious arguments; if however the jack is too persistent, the doe will box at him, rising up on her hind legs, keeping head and shoulders above him. She can then box down at him to prevent any attempt he makes at mating. When a jack has won a doe, he rarely stays with her for more than a day or two - long enough to ensure a successful mating. This gives rise to the expression 'as mad as a March Hare'.