A Slow Week - with Rabbits

Sunday 15 February

Out and About

This week started as the one before left off, overnight temperatures below -20C and not much warmer during daylight. Then mid week, as temperatures started to rise slightly we had a snow fall that required shoveling of fresh paths for me to get across the garden and fill up the seven or so bird feeders. It’s been a strange winter, because while we have not really had the usual mega-dump of snow even once, we have all been worrying about climate change. Everything is white, but nowhere has it been very deep … and then the meteorologists stepped in with some unwanted facts and told us that in truth, we have had more than the average fall to date but it’s been coming just a flurrying centimetre or two at a time and compacting, and so the overall depth has remained fairly manageable. I have needed the snowshoes on only a couple of times going to the banding station on my weekly winter shift visits, when usually they would have been permanent residents in the back of the car by now.

This past fortnight-and-a-bit I have been walking to a friend’s house twice a day to look after their cat while they are away and I have noticed, day by day, an increase in small twittering early morning (this cat expects breakfast at dawn) birds breaking the usual silence. One day, although the air temperature was very low (vide supra), when the sun shone you could almost imagine a bit of heat in its beams. Last year, a month hence, my notes tell me was the first snow melt and a few snowdrops had appeared (16 March) so maybe, just maybe, spring is not too far away. Who knows … but the vegetable seed order has been placed and will be delivered soon. Tomato sowing under lights in the basement cannot be too far away 👍. Come April and May there will be the “moving of plants” - a seasonal tradition in our sort of garden.

Carolina Wren

Cardinal Breakfast Time - and there were more hiding to the right.

… and another Carolina Wren, just because they are such tough little guys making a living up here in the cold.

“Wild Encounters” … as signaled last week - this is a new Sunday venture being trialled (or is that trialed? Another difference from one side of the Atlantic to another) following the apparent, and encouraging, success of a recent article about Cardinals. Each week, hopefully and in theory, special consideration will be given to some species of bird, insect, mammal or plant that we have come across. Ones which you might enjoy learning more about. Trying to go a little beyond, or at least beside, the standard field guides while not overwhelming you with too much “science” stuff. Not that there’s anything wrong with science, after all that’s how I have paid my way in the world, but it can be a bit overwhelming if you come from a different discipline. Gentle guidance.

Eastern Cottontail Rabbits

I serendipitously decided on “Rabbits” for this second Sunday Wild Encounters post because we have a resident that has set up home in the garden and wanders around seeking seed husks that have fallen from a bird feeder and nibbling on dried stems of plants left to overwinter half below the snow. Last winter he killed a couple of young shrubs by ring-barking the stems - hope that isn’t going to be repeated.

New World (NW) Eastern Cottontails, despite their common name, and striking visual similarity, are NOT quite regular rabbits - at least, not if you grew up in Europe like we did. They are closer to, but also not the same as, Old World (OW) HARES than they are to OW Rabbits. Cottontails are evolutionarily and behaviorally more Hare-like than they are like a European Rabbit—even though people casually call them “rabbits.” Another instance in which common names can be confusing.

OW rabbits and hares and NW rabbits are all Order: Lagomorpha, Family: Leporidae, Subfamily: Leporinae but molecular phylogenies consistently show that cottontails (Genus: Sylvilagus) and hares (genus: Lepus ) share a more recent common ancestor than the OW or European rabbit (genus: Oryctolagus) which branched off earlier in evolutionary history. Hence, cottontails are not just small hares, but they are genetically closer to hares than to the European rabbit - the animal that defines the cultural idea of a “rabbit” in many people’s minds. Think Beatrix Potter and The Flopsy Bunnies.

In today’s world European Rabbits have evolved as specialized burrowing animals and European Hares evolved separately as open-country speed runners while in North America Cottontails adapted to their environment and became generalists, sitting in behaviour midway between Euro-Rabbits and Euro-Hares. They are more compact than hares and considerably less specialized for digging than Euro-Rabbits; in fact they don’t dig at all, just do some rearranging of cover grasses under a sheltering shrub. Hares favor open habitats and rely on speed to evade predators and Cottontails usually live in dense cover where they can rely on hiding for safety. Euro-Rabbits, of course, just need to be able to run fast enough to get to their burrows where they are safe. Cottontails are adapted for environments with plenty of cover and rely on high breeding rates, whereas hares exploit open habitats and invest more in each newborn’s immediate survival - hares are born with hair and open eyes and almost ready to run.

So, logically calling Cottontails, Rabbits is incorrect, despite their visual similarity, and they also are not Hares, despite their closer evolutionary relationship. Perhaps it would be less confusing altogether to simply call them Cottontails, and drop the Rabbit part of the common name altogether.

Mind you, it’s only people like me who care much about this stuff 😉 - the world will keep turning whatever names we use.

I particularly care when Mr or Mrs Cottontail expects a share of the vegetable harvest or spends winter ring-barking and killing the stems of choice shrubs … as our rabbit is doing as I write.

There are some minor anatomical differences between NW and OW rabbits though just knowing which continent you are on make them rather less important for ID. You are unlikely to see them side by side unless you are in a zoo. The tails of cottontails are “cotton‑ball” like and the underside is large, white, and fluffy, easily visible when the animal hops. OW rabbit tails are also white underneath, but the tail is shorter and looks more like a small white patch rather than a full cotton ball. Cottontail ears are relatively long, extending beyond the head and OW rabbit ears are shorter compared to the body length. The skull of OW rabbits is broader with a wider nasal opening, undoubtedly due to their burrowing habit and differences in feeding mechanics.

Folklore often depicts rabbits as clever and quick creatures, as seen in stories like “Br’er Rabbit” (North America) and “Peter Rabbit” (England), reflecting their agility and adaptability. Due to their high reproductive rate and ability to exploit human-altered landscapes, eastern cottontails manage to maintain stable populations and are not considered threatened - which is probably a good thing because, if nothing else, they are important prey for a range of predators such as foxes, coyotes, hawks, and the larger owls.

Settled quietly amongst the stems of dense thicket shrubs for protection

Cute youngster

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A bird I want to meet

By chance, many good things come by chance, I have learned of a bird by the name of the Himalayan Monal. Its name alone tells you why I almost certainly will not see one in reality, but please look at the photographs in this short article. Have you ever seen anything quite so gorgeous?

https://mymodernmet.com/himalayan-monal-mid-flight-sudhir-hasamnis/

The Himalayan Monal (Lophophorus impejanus), is a Pheasant found in the Himalayan forests and shrublands, primarily found at elevations between 2,100 and 4,500 meters. It is the national bird of Nepal.

And, from elsewhere, a pean to LBJs as spring gets closer

Oh, God. Whatever next?

👉🏼 A thing that made me go ‘hmm’: Cambridge Botanic Gardens is using AI to allow visitors to have “conversations” with plants in the Glasshouse. Per the blurb, “Talking Plants invites you to take part in a live experiment exploring how artificial intelligence can help us connect more deeply with the plant kingdom.” Per me (after screaming into a cushion in several registers): IT REALLY CAN’T, because a) learning ≠ connection and b) you can’t connect with a plant via a chatbot because PLANTS AREN’T CHATBOTS and CHATBOTS AREN’T BEINGS OF ANY KIND. I find this idea so utterly wrongheaded it’s given me a migraine.

• To be fair, and I do try sometimes, I went back and tracked down a webpage at the Botanic Gardens - I see now what they are trying to do and to learn, but please, stick some text I can read on my phone behind those QR codes. I do NOT want to talk with a damned chatbot. Ever!

That is from the ever readable Melissa Harrison … link below, where you will also see a video of Molly Dancers parading in the gloom. Thirty plus years ago Molly Dancing on a dark, often wet, January evening in Huntingdonshire was what we did too. I make no apologies, but reaching the pub at the end was always welcome.

A strange procession

I think this last link is quite something, even if it has nothing to do with the theme of this post. My apologies, but maybe ponder on this tale in these often benighted days - " ... not everything can be saved or helped or fixed, but that does not mean that something can’t be. The night of the shipwreck, hundreds of people drowned. But one baby lived. And a couple took him in, and raised him"

golden edges

Let’s end with another Wren … you can never have too many Wrens