Finding mountain hares
Last week I was to be found in snowier climes, Scotland namely, in the pursuit of photographing mountain hares. I thought I would write about how we found them, specifically the contrasts with brown hares. I could have written a blog about other aspects- like how unbelievably cold it is when you are not moving and are holding metal camera equipment, despite two layers of most items of clothing (two hats, two pairs of socks, two pairs of gloves etc etc), or how I fared with climbing hills day after day with heavy camera bag, but I will not mention those struggles (except that I just did).
The first point I wanted to make is just how vast Scotland is and thus how large individual estates can be. Partly because of this I wanted to do a bit of research. Some estates have poor reputations with regards wildlife crimes, and whilst unfortunately, the culling of mountain hares is not a crime [it should be], it does not make sense to spend time looking for mountain hares in such places. Happily, some estates are managed with a favourable and even proactive attitude towards wildlife conservation, and after a day researching I had created a beautiful colour-coded map of part of the Cairngorms showing the different estates.
I should explain why mountain hares are culled: they can be host to ticks that spread the disease louping ill to the game grouse. As reasons against any culling: many other creatures harbour ticks, mountain hares are our native hare species belonging in the highlands, and the management of land for grouse shoots throws up other environmental concerns, namely the burning of heather. I don't want to turn this into a piece against the culls, after all I'm guessing that I could be preaching to the converted.
Incidentally, 'louping' is pronounced 'lowping' according to my reading online. I knew that it was not pronounced 'looping' from my undergraduate degree but I thought it was more like 'lyping'. Maybe it's either, varying with different Scottish accents (?).
Back to the finding of mountain hares. In addition to my beautiful colour-coded map, I used tip-offs, reports from other people who had seen mountain hares. One place that was both blue on my map (denoting good) and had reports of hares did not turn out to be fruitful, but that may have been because we did not get high enough up the hill, hampered as we were by thigh-deep snow. But another place turned out to be a great place to find mountain hares.
That leads to a similarity between mountain and brown hares: that you can be in the right place and just not see them. They may be hidden by vegetation, or in the case of mountain hares, hunkered down in a little snow cave. So it helps to have perseverance, a keen eye and some luck.
