Page 8 - Ickford Informer March 2022

christopher sandham
NATURE

NOTES

St Nicholas Church, Ickford - Spring flowers Mountain Hare scratching. English Brown Hare
It’s Spring – at last!

T HE EARLY SIGNS OF SPRING ARE EMERGING AROUND THE VILLAGE,

and I am sure some of you will have seen the magnificent show of
snowdrops in our churchyard where primroses are also about to bloom.

We are very lucky to have such Hares, like rabbits, pass two kinds of
a beautiful churchyard which is a droppings. The moister of the two is
haven for a wide variety of fauna and eaten and passes though the digestive
flora through the year. Here at the system for a second time before being
Old Rectory I am lucky enough to discharged as a dry pellet.
enjoy at close quarters this important
ecological oasis. We must thank Hares, unlike rabbits, live above ground
those who volunteer to look after it and make a ‘form’ partly hidden in grass
so well. but providing a view of its surroundings.
Their young are called leverets and stay
March is the time of the ‘Mad above ground where they are vulnerable
Crocus
March Hare’, one of my favourites to foxes and birds of prey. They prefer
of British mammals. You may not dry ground and hence are seen less
know that in our islands three often in the wetter parts of our parish.
different hares exist, the English There is clear evidence that since the
Brown Hare which is widespread emergence of the Red Kite the young are
and most common but less so in more threatened, even though Kites are
recent years, the Mountain Hare, primarily presumed to be scavengers.
and the Irish Hare a smaller version
of the Brown Hare with a reddish In the past hares were also harbingers
tone to the fur. of ill fortune, as in 1513 at the battle
of Flodden Field. Apparently hares
In pagan times hares were held appeared and, despite a volley of
in high regard and celebrated in missiles from James IV of Scotland’s
springtime. Later the Christians troops, the English army easily
not liking paganism reinvented the escaped untouched. This did not bode
celebrations but substituted the well and James suffered a terrible
Easter bunny. defeat and was killed. v Daffodils

ourickfordnewsletter@hotmail.com 8 March 2022