La Fosse – Chambres d'Hôte Perriers-en-Beauficel, Normandie

A few years have passed since I last used this blog and a lot has happened… happened to all of us, I’m sure. We’ve got older (better than the alternative) and retirement has gently beckoned. We’re not totally retired, we still love having chambres d’hôte guests to stay, but nowadays they tend to be returning guests or arrive via recommendations from people locally who don’t always have the space visiting friends and family need. We no longer advertise actively for guests which means we have no need for an ‘official’ website and I’ve decided to convert this blog into a simple shop window for our chambres d’hôte. There will be enough information here for people who haven’t met us yet and it will also become a way of keeping up with Life @ La Fosse for those who love our little bit of Normandie. Very best wishes to all of you.

December can be a bit of a blowy month (as well as downright cold and rainy) but we took advantage of a briskly cold but bright day recently and had a tramp around Avranches Jardin des Plantes. Overlooking the Baie de Mont-St-Michel, it suffers from some traffic noise but it is sheltered and there are some interesting plants, sculptures, memorials and trees.

Looking over the hydrangea beds (in need of a bit of dead-heading) towards the cathedral just outside the Jardin

I’ve not seen a persimmon tree before but here one is, fruit still hanging on in December. The fruit was very popular with blackbirds who were feeding straight from the branches

The persimmon – or sharon fruit – is called kaki in France which, from a background of Old English slang, doesn’t make it sound the most appealingly named item. I think they’re fairly tasteless (ie, flavour!) but perhaps they’re just delicate and too much garlic has burnt out my ‘delicate’ tastebuds.

A carpet of golden Ginko biloba leaves under quite a venerable specimen – such a fabulous shape and texture

This is a mulberry tree in full leaf in early December… which surprised us

Bumblebee, lightly dusted with seasonal glitter (okay, pollen) working hard on winter-flowering honeysuckle

It was nice to see that the Jardin had thought about its insects with large and varied premises just for them.

Whether the bumblebee had booked in for the winter I don’t know (a whole new commercial opportunity for Airbnb perhaps) but I doubt it as they prefer to overwinter in a sheltered hole in a bank or perhaps a crevice in a wall.

There are viewing platforms which enable you to look across the Baie towards le Mont-Saint-Michel rising out of the haze in the distance

We’ve had a lot of rain since our visit and I’d like to see how it looks 3 weeks on – it’s definitely a flood plain (hence the very sensible lack of dwellings) and there’ll be a lot of ‘casual water’ lying around by now.

A few photos of views and a rather nice picnic table which would be lovely and shady in warmer weather.

I suspect not.

I cannot believe that it is approaching two years since I blogged. How can the time have flown so fast? I was distracted by a tumblr site I started last year to enable me to post quick batches of photos of places we had been and things we had seen but even that has fallen into disuse. And it’s not as if I don’t have plenty of wildlife to blog about…

A friend has been having the fun and interest of watching hares – of various sizes – visit her garden since spring so in view of the fact that hares are on my mind, I’ll take the opportunity to write about Grunty the Leveret. That should also please a certain Madame Cardy…

It was a hot and sunny afternoon in early June about 7 years ago. I’d noticed Pepper the dog lying in full sun, looking hot and uncomfortable but intent on something in the long grass. I didn’t think much of it but about an hour later, noticed he was still there, panting hard and he’d been joined by several cats who were also looking down into the grass. Odd.

On closer inspection, a small creature sat up on its hind legs and grunted loudly and aggressively at me. The cats backed off, Pepper wagged his tail and I picked up what I assumed was a rabbit and then realised must be a leveret, a baby hare.

Oh blimey !

Leveret, estimated to be between 24 and 48 hours old

Young rabbits don’t emerge from the warren until they are well developed and mobile. This feisty little creature was too small and not sufficiently mobile to be a young rabbit so it must be a hare. And I’d picked it up. Having picked it up, I’d transferred my scent to the animal so even if I could figure out from where Pepper had found the leveret (which was not possible) Mama Hare would reject the leveret because it now smelt ‘wrong’.

The unevenness to the round shape of the eyelid and the slightly crinkly ears are the clues as to his age established via photos by Susan McClure of Harebells in the UK

First step was to find out how to keep the animal alive. Google was my – and the leveret’s – friend. I found the wonderful Hare Preservation Trust’s website and also an exceptionally knowledgeable and helpful woman – Susan McClure – who patiently talked me through the first few days.

The site (at that time) recommended powdered kitten milk as being the product most easily available from a vet in sensible quantities for most people. However, the gold standard was ewe replacement milk for lambs – for reasons of high fat content, apparently. Happily, though we had no ewe replacement milk in the house, we knew where we could get it so while I got to work with some glucose solution in case the leveret was dehydrated, Patrick went off in search of a friendly neighbourhood farmer who was bottle-feeding lambs and therefore had a scoopful of powder available. And my mission to Grow A Leveret began…

…How to grow a leveret – part 2 to follow in a few days.

Well, the past few mornings and evenings, I’ve been out leveret spotting and the good news is… I have no news. There’s been no sign of them and I think their migration from the comparitive safety of the field was due to a herd of young cattle in that field, trampling around them. Patrick is fairly sure that, during the afternoon, the electric fence had been relocated to give the calves a new strip of grazing and that may have interfered with the leverets. I hope they went back, tucked themselves in close to the hedgerow (not ideal but out of the way of bovine feet) and were found and fed by their mother on schedule.

Hares prefer to give birth – and lie low themselves – in pasture which is either lightly managed (ignored!) or grazed by cattle. Sheep graze pasture closely which leaves no daytime cover for either adult hares or leverets whereas cattle ‘browse’ more and often leave tussocks of grass and weeds more or less untouched. This uneven ground is perfect cover for hares who scrape themselves a slight depression and hunker down, ears flat, to wait out the day. Though they do sit up occasionally to check out the lie of the land…

It occurs to me that I’ve never written about Grunty, a leveret brought home by Pepper, a yellow labrador X that we had till a few years ago. I’ve a lot of blog-worthy things to catch up with – mating moths, glow worms, Loose & Leafy Tree Following (which I’ve not got around to publishing this past two months) but I must also make time to post about The Leveret Summer – when we raised a 48 hour old leveret from a few hundred grams to a very healthy release weight. In October, when I have a little more time, I think. 🙂

Grunty the Leveret, post feed, aged 2 – 3 days old

As if I haven’t enough to fret about… this evening, just as it turned dark, I was driving back from the village to La Fosse when a small creature hopped across the road. At first glance, it was a young rabbit. At second glance…

…it was a leveret – a young hare.

Hares are remarkable creatures. The female gives birth to eyes-open, fully furred, young. She parks them in a field or similarly suitable rough grass where they’ll blend into the foliage and earth colours.

Depending on season and availability of food, she’ll give birth to between 2 and 4 leverets and they nestle into the ground, in the open, in all weathers from day one. Mother Hare returns morning and evening to feed the youngsters and the milk bar is open for about a minute before she is loping off again and leaving the leverets to wait until her next visit. They’ll wait through blazing sun, heavy Normandy rain, frosts and even snow.

Whereas young rabbits (born hairless and with eyes closed underground in the warren) will try and run away once they are old enough to be above ground, young hares rely on their camoflage to keep them safe. At this age, they try to avoid running – or even moving – they fold their ears back and hunker down in the hope that the danger – the predator – will pass them by. So as I’d established that the one I’d seen was a hare, I drove home to pick up a camera in case they were still there when I got back.

They were… two of them (but possibly a third further up the bank at the back of the verge) and judging by their size, they are about 4-5 weeks old. I’d expect them to still be on mother’s milk and am concerned that they were on and adjacent to the road. However, they are big enough to be mobile – though not fast – perhaps they sensed danger in the field (a marten, stoat or weasel?) and decided to move. Or perhaps something has happened to Mother Hare and they were moving in the hope of finding her. The timing, shortly after dusk, certainly fits with feeding time. Well, I can’t know but I am really hoping that these little leverets will survive.

I’ll look for them in the morning, of course, but doing the right thing is impossible to gauge. If I touch them, that’s it: as I have to assume they are still being fed milk, I would have to take them and finish raising them to release weight. If I touch them, Mother Hare – if she is still around – will smell my scent on them and will abandon them.

I hate these natural world conundrums… life is precarious for these little creatures but interfering if you don’t know the circumstances is not a good idea. If I’d seen a hare dead on the road I’d have no hesitation in making an assumption, scooping up these little creatures and helping them over the next few weeks with ewe replacement milk (richer in fats compared to, say, kitten milk) and then weaning them on to grass and herbs. But if Mother is still doing her thing, they’re better off with mum than going through the shock of adapting to being bottle fed.

And if I’m honest, even if they do continue to survive with or without mum, just as they get their legs – the powerful back legs which give them their speed and ability to change direction in a heartbeat – the hunting season will start and if a local gun spots these magical creatures, I can confidently predict the end of several short little lives.

I am not against hunting for the pot, but hares are fascinating, secretive animals and their behaviours are not fully understood even now and I’d really rather see them running wild at dawn and dusk than providing a few mouthfuls on a plate.