UK Nature and Environment

Share your recent wildlife encounters - large or small.

I haven't had anything really spectacular for a while, but I live in a fairly tucked away spot in East Anglia and the last stretch to reach home is along a farm track with an open field alongside. When I drive home along this in the evenings - with headlights on - one of the brown hares that spend time in the field will run in towards the lights and then curve to run parallel with my car maybe 20m away. I don't know why they do this, but I have found the same behaviour in the past too. I used to live and work on a coastal nature reserve. The drive on or off involved a couple of miles along an open shingle track and hares would frequently do exactly the same there if I crossed it in the evenings with headlights on. They would run in from the surrounding vegetated shingle. It seemed as though they were enjoying the 'race' - staying parallel with the Landrover for some hundreds of meters at a time before peeling off again.

One or two of the hares will visit our garden too later in the year - but they haven't over the winter.