I noticed this little bunny (Oryctolagus cuniculus) hopping around my lawn the other day and took a sneaky picture. A few days later I was sitting in the garden looking at things and thinking, and thinking and looking, when two rabbits appeared! Probably a buck and his doe, or the other way round if you are not being sexist, but I am not sure which is which.
They seemed quite happy to coexist with the pheasants (Phasianus colchicus) who also like to roam my lawn in the velvet cool of evening: a cock and his little harem of three hens (much of Nature seems to be regrettably pre-feminist) who like nothing better than to gobble up my freshly-sown grass seed and sometimes steal food off the bird table. The rabbits, while incredibly nervous of any sound or motion, seem entirely oblivious of the pheasants pecking around them, and vice versa.
Interestingly though, when a raptor of some kind flew over, and the cock gave his wild alarm shriek, the rabbits also scattered for cover. Evidently they don’t mind pheasants, but they are smart enough to use them as an alarm system.
It is a fine thing to lounge in the garden and watch so many different species of animals eating all my stuff. Well, there’s plenty to go around.
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