Monday, April 14, 2008
I WAS away for a few days and when I came back there was a message on my answering machine. It was from a man I didn’t know who lived in the local village. He wanted advice on how to rear two baby hares.
Hares, unlike rabbits, are born with their eyes open and all their fur and look like miniature adults. Their mother leaves them hiding in the grass and goes off to graze, checking up on them from time to time. So if you find a leveret in the grass the best thing to do is leave it there. It’s not abandoned and the mother will return eventually.
I rang to apologise to the man for my delay in responding and to see if I was too late with my advice. I discovered this story was a bit different.
The man’s son lives in England but was working on a construction project at Dublin Airport. He had found the two tiny leverets in the middle of a busy building site where they certainly wouldn’t have survived. So he presented them to his father and returned to England.
The poor man was left holding the baby and he’d got some pretty good advice from other sources. The local chemist had supplied him with a glass eye-dropper and powdered formula of ‘weaning milk’. He was successfully feeding the leverets with this and they seemed to be thriving.
But he was a very dedicated foster father and he was setting an alarm clock and feeding the babies every three or four hours throughout the day and night. I explained that a mother hare only suckles her young once every 24 hours, usually around dusk, and the alarm clock was not necessary. A tired sigh of relief came down the phone line.
We then discussed what to do if he was successful in rearing and weaning the leverets. Successfully returning a hand-reared animal or bird to the wild isn’t easy. Falconers call this process ‘hacking back’. But birds of prey are carnivores and have to be taught to hunt for themselves. Hares are herbivores which makes things a little easier.
He decided on a place we both knew, a wilderness area where there is a hunting and shooting ban, and I hope his hares make it there eventually.
Most of the other calls and emails that came in while I was away were about birds. A reader has a problem because her bird feeding station is attracting rats. A rat shouldn’t be able to access a properly designed and sited bird table but I have seen them waiting underneath for scraps that drop from the feeders. There’s no easy solution but, if it’s feasible, the best answer is a small and active dog which will not threaten the birds but will chase the rats away.
Another reader has a very mysterious problem. She has been feeding wild birds in her garden for many years but recently the blue tits and house sparrows have started eating the blossom off her berberis and quince shrubs. She wants to know if any other readers have noticed the same behaviour and if anyone can suggest a reason or a solution.
I have finally found a source where I can buy niger seed and the special feeders needed for it. The idea was that this would distract the goldfinches and give the other birds a chance at the peanut and mixed seed feeders. Not successful — I just got more goldfinches.
* dick.warner@examiner.ie
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