Today I was back there, and after dark I walked round with a lamp to see how many rabbits remain.
I've marked on this aerial photo (taken from the excellent Multimap) where we caught the rabbits on 1 January (blue dots), and where I spotted rabbits in the lamp tonight (red dots).
It was interesting to see that there are still one or two in the burrows that we ferreted - I knew that we had let the odd one get away. But also that almost three weeks on, there has been very little movement of rabbits into the now underpopulated burrows, either from the wooded side of the field (top of the picture), or from the hedge along the footpath (bottom of picture).
Once spring arrives and the rabbits begin breeding, I'd expect to see them start to spread out more, as they look for somewhere to have their young.
2 comments:
Looks like you know where to go ferreting next time! Nice scouting.
We in America have it easier: Cottontails do not dig warrens the way your Euro-bunnies do. For us the drill is kick brushpile, see rabbit run, shoot rabbit, make rabbit into stew...
Looks like we've got our work cut out. i'll call you.
SBW
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