Spring Madness

Spring fever is in the air with mad hares and queer coots, says Pip Webster, who tells us what to look out for around the cut.

Spring fever is in the air – birds are singing in their bright breeding plumage as all the waterside wildlife celebrates surviving another winter.

Some of the craziest behaviour can be seen in the open fields alongside the towpath where hares are leaping around having boxing matches. It isn’t just males fighting – the females are fending off over-amorous advances of spurned lovers.

It is the start of the breeding season and the normally shy, reclusive hares are easier to observe before the grass has started growing. Cousins of the more familiar rabbit, hares are altogether bigger, tawnier and rangier with longer legs and distinctive black tips to their long ears. They are Britain’s fastest land mammal and can outrun most pursuers, swerving and zig-zagging to outwit them.