Hare today...

One of the "targets" for when we were up in Scotland was to photograph  mountain hares. We have seen them before and knew of a couple of good areas for them but we didn't have good photos. With Wendy and Michael having been up there two weeks earlier and providing us with accurate location info we set out on our first full day to target them. Fortunately the weather was incredibly kind to us and we had sun most of the morning.
The area we went to was the Findhorn Valley. This is normally a location for seeing raptors, especially eagles. You reach it quite easily from Aviemore, with a very scenic drive along the valley. Eventually the road runs out and you have a  choice of two car parks - the far one to take a walk down the valley and look for raptors, or the near one to walk up the valley side and look for hares. We chose the latter one.
This area is known as being good for hares for the main reason that they are not shot here. On many of the surrounding estates the gamekeepers slaughter them in astounding numbers in a pretence of protecting the massively overstocked grouse populations from a virus carried by the hares. In practice of course they are trying to protect the income from shooting parties!! Hares are not the only targets and anything that may compete is also killed, hence the strange and frequent disappearances of golden eagles and hen harriers over grouse moors.
There was only one other car in the carpark when we put on our boots and loaded up our rucksacks to walk up the mountain side. Its actually an easy walk, along a track up the side of the hill going firstly through the valley then up the moor and finally onto the ridge line. There was still a bit of snow around on the higher ground as we walked up.
With Easter being so early it was very quiet - no songbirds to speak of apart from the odd meadow pipit - but we did see a couple of golden eagles in the far distance, way too far off to photograph though.
Finally we got the snow line and started seeking our target.

The hares are in the process of changing from their white winter coats into a browner summer pelt. It did mean that they stood out quite well which was how we saw the first one hunkered down into the heather.

This one was on its though and despite my best efforts at stalking it hopped off over the ridge line. We carried on up the mountain though and got to where the snow was a lot thicker. This turned out to be hare central. There were literally dozens of them pottering around on the moorland, feeding on the heather and chasing each other around.

We then spent an absolutely magical hour or so with the hares. They are very tolerant of people letting you get to within a few yards of them. Apparently the trick is not to be quiet but to talk to the hares as you approach them - we even tried singing to them!!! They don't like being surprised. I don't know if it really works but they were certainly very relaxed with us around.

One hare particularly let us get to almost within touching distance of it with two giant photographers looming over it!!!

It was interesting to study them as well You can see how they are so well adapted to life up in the snow, with really long hind legs for keeping them from sinking in.

Eventually the weather started to change and we left the hares to get on with their feeding and pre-mating rituals. A stunning day and amazingly we were pretty much the only people up there to share it. Definitely something we will be doing again.