Remember how it was sung in one famous children's song: “The gray cow-hare rode under the Christmas tree”? Everything would be fine, but gray bunnies under a winter tree can’t ride well! After all, the cold season in our area involves a certain preparation for it ...
By the way, how is the hare getting ready for winter? As you might have guessed, it all starts with molting.
It begins in September, lasting exactly until the first snow falls. The older the hare, the faster it goes through this process. In old and weakened animals, molting is also delayed, sometimes passing until December. For a very long time, the old summer fur remains in the eye area.
Since the hare thoroughly prepares for the winter, the matter is not limited to changing the coat.
It should be noted that the whites and grouse are largely distinguished by their “winter” behavior. They are similar only in that, contrary to popular belief, hares do not run around all day as scalded, but dig quite solid burrows in the snow.
Crayfish choose places for arranging lying in lowlands, closed from the wind. If the snow is deep, then they dig holes, the length of which often exceeds two meters. Especially for this, in the winter on their feet thick brush of fur grows, with which the hares lead their undermining.
The whites are not so adept at digging, and therefore they dig out shelters no longer than one and a half meters.
Their peculiarity is that hares of this species use their wide paws not so much for digging as for tamping the snow: unlike the grouse, they do not push it out, which makes it difficult for predators to find them.
But how does the hare prepare for winter when it comes to food issues? There is nothing particularly telling here: unlike the squirrels, the long-eared stocks are not made, relying on “brushes” on its paws, with which they dig food, and on their teeth, which gardeners curse.
Remember how fruit tree trunks are coated with lime? This is done just to protect against the machinations of hares.
As soon as deep snow lays, they switch to feeding on young shoots of trees. Most willingly they eat maple, aspen and fruit species, for which gardeners do not like them so much. They pass to the birch only in case of especially severe winters, when nothing else can be obtained.
Since the hare is preparing for winter without creating reserves, he has to tight at this time. Eared metabolism at this time is accelerated, since it takes a lot of energy to maintain heat.
Because of this, the hare is forced to eat almost all the time. That is why in winter, “cowardly” hares easily come into contact with a person, coming close to his home. Very often they even make their burrows in the haystacks of hay harvested from the summer, providing themselves with housing and food for the whole winter.
It is no coincidence that we wrote “cowardly” in quotation marks, since in the winter the hare does not suffer from a lack of courage in the forest. We give one illustrative case.
In 1965, one hunter injured a hare who escaped into a swampy lowland. There, a hungry hawk dived at him. The big-eared ran away from him, heading into the open field.
There he was attacked by a fox, from which the hare escaped, sharply turning to the village. But this was not the end of his adventure! There he was attacked by crows, from whom he hid, hiding under a barn that belonged to the same hunter who had been following the trail all this time. Of course, he did not kill such a brave eared.
So you found out how the hare is preparing for winter, and what are the features of its behavior during this period.