A white Hare or a plastic bag?

Today's white hare

"My white hare"

One of the best bits about my job is when people contact me about interesting things that they have seen or found. Today, hidden away amongst a plethora of yawn provoking E-mails, lay one that brought a smile to my face from a North Hampshire farmer.

He had spotted a white Hare on his farm and had managed to take a photo of it. Knowing that I had filmed one not far from his farm back in 2010, he kindly sent me the photo as he knew I would be interested, as indeed I am. 

I doubt that it is the same beastie that I caught up with three and half years ago, as it is a dangerous world out there if you are a Hare and being white does not help one little bit! But the thought that it is highly likely that his genes continue to live on in the local population is rather wonderful.

“My” hare had a rather nice story behind it. It was harvest time and the farmer saw what he thought was a white plastic bag out on the stubble field. Moaning grumpily about rubbish and litter-louts, he strode purposely out across the field to pick it up. But as he drew near, it got up and ran away!

He kindly rang me to tell me his news and as soon as the weekend arrived I went to his farm to see if I could photograph it. It took me two trips and a long “stalk” to finally catch up with it, but it was a superb experience to spend some time with this beautiful creature.

There is a lot of mythology connected with Hares which fascinates me – but that is perhaps a blog for another day (or find out by coming on one of my Brown Hare courses that I run!), but a white hare would probably have been viewed in days gone by as an omen of some sort.

Seth Lakeman, the English folk singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist, wrote a song about a white Hare and one of the verses goes like this: 

“Careful you don`t catch her
Give her right of way,
For she will look upon you,
Steal your soul away”