Country Life
By IAN NIALL
READING further reports that the rabbit is changing its environment, by favouring open ground and scrapes and depressions rather than holes, makes me wonder if it is reverting to an old habit or following the pattern that makes a hare resident of a parish rather than of a particular part of a field or wood. Perhaps when numbers increase, as they surely will, rabbits will reoccupy their old haunts. It seems to
me that it isn't so much a question of warrens being uninhabitable, although many must have fallen in, as the simple point of survival. A rabbit warren, when the population was at its peak, was a com- paratively safe place for the individual when a stoat came snaking through, for the stoat wasn't selective and killed the first victim he came upon. At the moment one or two rabbits living in a hedgerow warren would undoubtedly fall an easy prey to stoats hunting in pairs or families, for they always worked systematically even when rabbits were plentiful. In the open the chances for rabbits are considerably better until, of course, creatures that used to feed on them regularly find them available again in sufficient numbers to make a staple diet. Casualties were always high in the old days before the plague, but now the recovery of the rabbit depends on the lowest possible death rate, and nature seems to be taking care of this.
Previous page
