rabbits – Page 2 – Rae Spencer

A Few Steps Closer to Spring

March 17, 2015March 17, 2015Rae Spencer6 Comments

Weeds March 16

I usually count the first open-windows day as the first day of spring, but this year I confused the issue by cheating. One day last week, desperate for fresh air, I opened the windows and wore a coat in the house for a few hours. Which means I can’t count yesterday as the first.

Cat March 10

February is always a tough month for me. Its cold, sun-starved days routinely trigger new bouts of depression and anxiety. March, on the other hand, is usually a month of recovery.

Yard March 16

And if this year’s recovery has been slower to start and harder to sustain than previous years, it has at least begun.

Hyacinth March 16

Honeysuckle March 16

The weather forecast promises a return of winter before the week is finished, but the lengthening days will not allow it to stay.

Hydrangea March 16

Soon the yard will be overrun and winter will fall away into memory, as it does every year.

Brown Thrasher March 16

Robin March 17

Rabbit March 17

From the Summer Archive

January 26, 2015Rae Spencer1 Comment

Rabbit July 29

Today’s winter storm should bring nothing more than miserably cold rain and a few flurries to our area, but I decided to stay inside anyway. I dug out my digital to-do list, pulled on my favorite socks, and settled in for an afternoon of computer work. Mid-way through organizing my 2014 photo archive, I opened a forgotten folder and found a forgotten cache of summer.

Squirrel July 8

These images don’t make my house warmer, and they won’t melt snow or ice, but they reminded me that summer is only a few months away.

Brown Thrasher July 26

Mockingbird July 20

It won’t be too long before spring rustles in — waking the yard’s flowers, urging birds to nest, and breathing life into new generations of insects.

Wasp Aug 31

Unknown July 6

Unknown Beetle Oct 10

Soon, sooner than February ever lets me imagine, it will be time to put away my favorite socks, turn off the heat, and open all the windows.

Caterpillar July 28

Soon…

Hydrangea June 27

Feeding the Rabbits

July 27, 2014Rae Spencer9 Comments

I never feed the rabbits on purpose. They are wild rabbits, not domestic.

Rabbit July 20

It’s a weak argument, at best, because I often put out bird seed. Birds are wild, as are the squirrels who steal the bird seed. Why feed them, but avoid feeding rabbits? Also, as a reader noted in commenting on a previous post, rabbits sometimes graze on flowers. Recent developments have made me consider this fact in new light. How can I claim to “never feed the rabbits” if I am planting flowers the rabbits will eat?

Marigold July 26

In past years the rabbits’ appetite for flowers has been low-impact, but this year’s toll is on the rise. By mid-July the victims included marigolds, rose of Sharon, succulents, a pair of ornamental sweet potato vines (which are in the process of recovering in a hanging basket), and coneflowers.

Succulents July 26

Potato Vine July 23

All of these losses were logged under “remember not to plant these again” and forgiven, until coneflowers entered the picture. Quite literally entered the picture, stoking my obsessive fascination with bees and bee photos.

Bee June 27

I bought the summer’s first coneflower on a whim, trying to ignore foggy memories of a previous coneflower failure. For over a week I enjoyed an increasing spectacle of bee activity.

Bee June 27

Then I woke one morning to a pitiful collection ruined coneflower parts. That afternoon, while a series of rabbits munched on the flower’s remains, I concocted a coneflowers-in-containers scheme. A short trip to the garden store later, I had a new bee-magnet planted out of the reach of rabbits. Or so I thought. Coneflowers, it seems, are irresistible rabbit treats. Containers that provided dependable rabbit-proofing in the past are no match for a motivated rabbit.

Deep in the grip of bee-mania, I returned to the garden store in search of a taller, better container. During that trip I bought two more coneflowers. I also bought tickseed and a hybrid black-eyed Susan, both labelled “deer resistant.”

Tickseed July 23

As I’m sure any true gardener would already know, “deer resistant” is not the same as “rabbit resistant.”

Rudbeckia July 23

As for my taller, better coneflower container…

The big rabbits conquered it almost immediately, and the smaller rabbits soon followed.

Rabbit July 21

After eating its fill, this one spent some time mocking me…

Rabbit July 21

I knew the rabbits could jump that high. I just didn’t think they would. Especially as there was very little cover available in or around the coneflower container, and hawks often hunt in our neighborhood. Under normal circumstances, the rabbits avoid being so exposed.

Rabbit June 26

The following photo shows the same rabbit as earlier. I’m pretty sure it was still mocking me…

Rabbit July 20

I should have given up after the second failure. More reasonably, after the first. Because, in the end, all of my efforts added up to an embarrassing series of rabbit feasts. And, as much as I enjoy watching and photographing the rabbits, I didn’t mean to feed them.

I didn’t mean to feed them because I enjoy watching and photographing them.

Rabbit June 26

(The above photos were taken in late June. The babies are still growing, and a group of slightly older rabbits has joined them in the yard.)

Rabbit July 20

The yard has never supported more than one or two rabbits over subsequent seasons, and five (or more) seems an invitation for overpopulation troubles. Ticks and tick-borne diseases are an obvious concern, as ticks are visible in many of my photos.

Rabbits July 5

Also, winter will certainly bring a shortage of food for the rabbits, along with other stressors. At this age, they should be learning how to find food. I fear that having it so easily delivered makes them less fit. It also encourages them to stay in a territory that cannot support such a dense population.

In trying to learn from my coneflower debacle, I’ve frozen my yard budget for the rest of the summer. No more new flowers. No more new containers. (I made one last purchase, before freezing the budget, which will appear in a future post.) The rabbits may take what they need from what the yard produces, and I will continue enjoying their antics, but they will remain wild. As wild as possible in their suburban habitat.

More and More Rabbits

June 17, 2014Rae Spencer4 Comments

Rabbit May 28

When the May litter of rabbits scattered, I lost track of all but two of the babies. One claimed the corner iris bed and another moved into the front yard. The mother rabbit visited both babies every day, but the one in the corner iris bed received the majority of her attention.

Rabbit May 22

It also received the attention of a new rabbit in the yard. The new rabbit was smaller and sleeker than the mother, and it seemed intensely curious about the baby.

Rabbit May 27

Rabbit May 22

I was a bit surprised by the mother rabbit’s acceptance of the newcomer. She never exactly welcomed the smaller rabbit, but she never chased it away, either.

Rabbit May 22

One evening the two grown rabbits and the lone baby hopped in and out of the irises for over an hour, as if all three were playing a strange, hesitant game of tag.

Rabbit May 22

Sadly, the baby rabbit died a few days after I took these photos. I found its body beside the shed, but there were no obvious clues as to why it had died.

About a week later, the baby in the front yard disappeared. The following photo was taken the last time I saw it. (Our neighbor later told me he had found the remains of a predator’s meal in his yard.)

Rabbit June 3

The longer I look at this photo, the more I wonder about those ticks. Was the rabbit ill? It had been grazing most of the morning, and returned to grazing after it woke, but still I wonder.

After the first baby died, but before the second disappeared, both of the adult rabbits turned their attention to the irises under our pear tree.

Rabbit May 27

I assumed a third member of the litter had taken refuge in these irises. I didn’t want to disturb it with a close inspection, but, when the adults continued their obsession with the irises long after the second baby disappeared, curiosity won.

Rabbits June 13

Another nest! They were almost big enough to leave the nest when I found them, and a day or two later they moved as a group to the other side of the iris bed.

Rabbits June 14

Yesterday morning they were scattered, each into a separate hiding place. By evening they gathered again under the pear tree and waited for their mother. (I’m tempted to say “their mothers,” because both adult rabbits continue to visit the babies.) She arrived on schedule and fed them in the irises. When she left, the babies emerged one at a time. Two hopped under the deck, one retreated into the bee balm, and the fourth hid under the hydrangea.

Rabbit June 16

I would love to have a way to keep up with the babies, to know if any survive to adulthood and where they settle when it’s time to raise their own young. This urge to know is familiar, and constant. It’s part of why I enjoy writing. When the story is mine, I get to know everything! But it’s a perilous wish outside of fiction, as the rabbits keep reminding me.

Revising My Rabbit Story

May 23, 2014Rae Spencer5 Comments

I’ve told rabbit stories on this blog a number of times. In fact, my very first post featured a rabbit nest and a tragedy involving a young hawk. In 2012, I devoted several posts to a nest that eventually fell prey to a mysterious attack during the night. To follow the story, see these posts:

Over the last few weeks, I’ve been following a new rabbit nest in the yard, and I’m beginning to doubt the story I constructed in 2012.

When I first found the new nest, freshly dug during the first week of May, it was empty. But a few days later, tufts of hair led me to investigate again.

This time there were babies! Thinly haired, eyes-closed babies that couldn’t have been more than three or four days old. Resisting the temptation to run for my camera, I tucked the grassy cover back into place and vowed to avoid disturbing the rabbits again. But then I found the grass displaced, two days later, and feared another predator had visited. Since I was checking anyway…

I didn’t want to wake them, so I didn’t get an accurate count. There were three bunnies at least. Maybe four. Maybe more? At any rate, apparently healthy baby rabbits sleeping comfortably in their hair-lined nest.

The mother rabbit visited every evening near sunset, to feed her offspring and clean the nest.

After each visit, she carefully re-covered the nest.

Day after day after day…

Until…

The scene was eerily similar to what happened in 2012. As before, I found one of the babies hiding on the other side of the yard but couldn’t find the rest.

And, as before, when the mother rabbit showed up to feed her babies that night, more of the litter came out of hiding.

The new arrivals raised the count of surviving babies to three. After they nursed, all three began exploring the yard. Two hopped in and out of the corner iris bed while the third ran back and forth along the fence. They popped in and out of sight so often that it became impossible to say exactly how many rabbits were playing in the yard. At least three, but quite possibly more.

The next night, the rabbits were in the irises and under the deck. They were getting increasingly adept at hiding, and they definitely spent less time nursing when their mother arrived.

All of this makes me reconsider my assumptions in 2012. What if there was no predator, then or now? What if the babies simply left their nest, scattering hair and dried grass as they emerged? Perhaps, instead of being driven out, this is the rabbit equivalent of fledging.

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