Winter Wildlife Tour Day 2 - Mountain Hares
It is day 2 of my recent winter wildlife tour, and the day I have been most excited for – mountain hares!
It was an early start, with a 6am alarm, to make sure I am ready to leave at 7:30. I like to add a certain amount of faff time to my mornings, so I don’t need to rush around… With my heated clothing on, gear packed (I was just taking my 200-600mm lens and my vlogging gear) and some lunch made, it was off to the car for a bit of a drive out to location for the day.
We arrived a little after 8:30 am and were not the first people there. Karen’s friend and fellow guide James was there with his own client, as well as one other person. That being said, it could have been worse as Karen mentioned that the end of January into February was when all the tours started in the area.
We geared up and headed off up the mountain to try and spot our first hare. Armed with a thermal scope and some binoculars, it didn’t take long for Karen to find our first hare of the day. We set on up the mountain, but unfortunately, we all convened at the same point. As James had got there first, we moved on and found ourselves another hare a bit further on in a pretty perfect location aka no grass blocking it and a clean background!
As we made our approach, we stopped at a good distance and got our cameras ready, as well as let the hare get used to our presence. Moving forward, Karen gave me the brief of how to approach closer, I was to make sure I was behind her, so that the hare could only see one of us. This would make us seem less threatening and keep the hare settled.
We moved in a bit closer, and dropped our bags, I got my first bank shot, just in case, and we stayed here for a good amount of time. Our hare’s coat, hadn’t changed fully to white this winter season, and still had some brown patched on its head. We watched for signs that it was comfortable with us, it's continuing to snooze, eating its cecal pellets and not sitting up, getting ready to run were all good things, so after a while we were able to slowly creep a bit closer.
Here I was able to get some cracking images of the hare, I made sure to keep an eye on my background, moving around a bit to get some cleaner images, as there was a patch of darker heather which was a bit off-putting.
Now it wasn’t the most animated of hares, with what little movements it was doing being very low level, but it was brilliant being able to sit with this hare, and have it be so comfortable with us.
After a good half an hour, we donned some extra layers, as we were in for the long haul, and crawled into our final position. I made sure to take the time to just sit with the hare and take it all in and not just view the day through the view finder of my camera.
Our hare was not the most animated of animals. Choosing to do any movement at a lower level, hidden by the grasses and heather. This lead to a lot of my images looking very similar.
To top off our day, the sun even came out, which if you have been in the UK this winter, was a very rare treat indeed! The sun added an extra layer to my images, by adding some nice catch lights into the eyes of the hare, as well as lighting up just its face.
With our hare not up too much, we decided it was safe for a bit of a lunch break, which was obviously when the hare finally decided to move! Luckily Karen was prepared, and had given me back my camera, just in case, and I was able to get somewhat into position and get some images of it having a good itch. Once this was over, I moved over a bit, to get a clearer view, which was when the hare started grooming its fore limbs.
All this action happened in about a 5 minute window, and once over, the hare went back to snoozing. The general thinking was that this was all the action we’d get out of our hare, and after over 3 hours together, we left it and moved down the hill to another hare to see if we could get some different images.
This hare was down amongst some tall grasses, which Karen said was more common than what we had earlier in our day. We tried our best to move around and make it work, but the grasses were just too long, and we had been spoilt by our previous hare, being in such a brilliant position. So we decided to call it a day, having got some of my best ever images, and head back to base.
My time on the mountain with the hares was just amazing, it was such an honour to be able to sit so close and have the hare be comfortable with our presence. I learnt so much from Karen, and I feel that if I was in a position to, I would be able to go out on my own and feel confident that I could approach a hare myself, which was the big thing that I wanted to take away from my 1:1 tour.
There is still one day left from my Winter Wildlife Tour, so be sure to keep your eyes peeled on my YouTube channel as well as my Instagram page for when that day is out!
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