Keep a watch on moonlit winter nights for these mysterious, frisky critters.
Our bit of land in northeastern Nova Scotia is currently awash with rabbits-more accurately called snowshoe hares. We watch them daily roaming around our house, built in their forest, seeking out dandelions, wild strawberries, and plantains in season. With swamp thickets and fields nearby, it's prime eastern Canadian "rabbitat." Another significant feature on the property is some relative freedom from domestic dogs and cats bent upon their demise. However, many wild predators on this land consider "splitting hares" to be a favourite dining activity. These include great horned owls, barred owls, goshawks, foxes, coyotes, bobcats, and weasels. Our presence and manner are mild by comparison, and the hares have grown accustomed to our being here. They bestow the honour of frequently ignoring us.
The adage "breeding like rabbits" aptly describes these inhabitants of all four Atlantic Provinces. Females give birth about 35 days after pregnancy, mating again within hours, to have a new litter every five weeks. Good years produce four litters of two to four youngsters each. They are born fully furred, wide-eyed, and able to hip-hop. This precocious characteristic distinguishes hares from rabbits, which are born naked and blind. Newborn snowshoe hares may be ready for the world, but they nonetheless have attentive mothers who preside over a great deal of foolishness.
Spring is a particularly joyful time for our hares. Attracted by new grass and winter salt residues on the gravel driveway, females hop purposefully around, even in daylight hours, packing in the nutrition they need for multiple pregnancies. Youngsters, on the other hand, are bundles of energy erupting all over the yard and lane. Standing in the driveway, I've had three rabbits tearing around me after each other, one wielding a large stick in its mouth to threaten the others. The trio screeched to a stop soon, sides heaving in exhaustion from the chase. My sides heaved, too-from laughter. Youngsters rarely breed in their first year-they're too busy tearing around!
Years ago, when I was a university student, a young apple farmer arrived at my apartment one day with two minuscule young hares in hand. Working in an orchard, Russ had spotted something brown in the grass and slammed on the brakes of his tractor.
The hares grew quickly, reaching their normal weight of 1.4 to 1.8 kilograms (three to four pounds), and lengths of 33 to 48 centimetres (13 to 18 inches). I decided to let them go in a rural hillside of forests and fields. Once set free, the pair never looked back, bounding off to a new adventure, and a normal summer diet of leafy greens.
As autumn leaves begin to fall, rabbits shift to browsing buds and twigs of species like birch, maple, roses, blueberry, rhodora, spruce, balsam fir, alder, and cedar. Stripping and consuming bark occurs when populations are high. In some years their debarking of tree trunks is notable as a "receding hare line."
Rabbits usually live in an area of eight hectares (20 acres) or less. The original land-clearing by settlers converted eastern forests into more favourable "rabbitat." They fare well in early forest growth after fires or following clearcuts. Softwood plantations are also favourite hiding haunts, if sources of food are within easy hopping distance.
To be well-equipped for winter, snowshoe hares gradually shed their brown summer coat and replace it with more dense white fur. Only their eyes and ear tips remain dark. The name refers to large, particularly well-furred hind feet, with wide-spreading toes that form a snowshoe pattern, increasing the area of their feet. This enables them to move around easily in most winter conditions. During spring and summer forestry/wildlife cruises, I often find signs of rabbit browse two metres (6.6 feet) or more off the ground. For rabbits, snowdrifts bring a welcome chance to reach new food. Their powerful legs and camouflaging coats help them to avoid many predators of the forest. They travel a network of trails and hide in forms, or resting places, under the spreading low branches of open-grown spruce and fir trees. Often the branches are weighted down by snow.
I also find them inhabiting holes under windthrown tree roots. We build brush piles for them by placing large tree material on the bottom, then progressively finer material on top. These hiding spots are quickly adopted.
Like Atlantic salmon, muskrats, caribou, lemmings, and some other North American wildlife species, snowshoe hare populations experience regular, dramatic rises and falls. These explosions and subsequent crashes occur over an approximately 10-year cycle that is somehow coordinated throughout the forests of Canada and the northern United States. Hare today, gone tomorrow. Rabbits may virtually disappear in some areas, but somehow manage to spring back.
A number of influences affect the ups and downs of hare populations. The condition of the land determines its ability to provide food and shelter. As rabbit numbers soar, so do populations of their predators. Hunting pressure exerted by many predators may force the hares to relocate, choosing the protection of dense forest cover rather than sites with abundant food. If this results in malnourished rabbits, fewer young will be born. When population densities are high, fighting among adults becomes a common activity, and diseases spread more easily. After hare numbers crash, predator numbers and hunting pressure drop, and the "rabbitat" gradually recovers, providing more food for survivors.
Some force of nature regulates snowshoe hare numbers on a continental scale, with their numbers rising and falling in unison across the entire 6,000-kilometre width of North America. Several researchers suspect the sun is a cause. Over the course of a 10.6 year period, more and then fewer sunspots are produced. The physics of these dark marks on the sun's surface is poorly understood. Times of increasing sunspots coincide with events when the sun becomes slightly brighter, and enormous flares of charged particles are released from its surface.
There has been a great deal of speculation by scientists regarding this solar cycle, and its potential links to many earth-bound happenings, such as our weather patterns. Every 80 years, a sunspot supercycle occurs, bringing twice the number of sunspots at its peak than occur during the low point. When the 80-year sunspot cycle is strong, scientists have discovered that the crash and boom nature of snowshoe hare populations closely follows the 10.6-year sunspot cycles. The link with our eastern hare is weaker, however, since our animals experience more irregular ups and downs. Scientists are still piecing this story together.
Adults who manage to steer clear of predators and disease usually live for four to six years. I've been photographing these bunnies for decades. One hare has become so accustomed to having me as close as three metres (ten feet) away over the past two years that it frequently falls asleep!
Snowshoe hares sometimes gather for an early season breeding ritual that includes dancing in a circle. Males competing for females sometimes resort to boxing or kicking matches. On late winter strolls through alder thickets, after a full moon, I have occasionally encountered large, perfect circles of tracks in fresh snow. Seeing their tracks makes me imagine the scene, if I could witness it, hidden in the moonlit shadows of snow-laden alders.
Snowshoe hares have an important role in our woodland ecosystems and wildlife food chains across eastern Canada. Beyond that, their antics keep me watching and wondering. I might just snowshoe through the moonlight to the alder swamp next March.