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Out There: When is a rabbit not a rabbit?

Creston Valley naturalist Ed McMackin explains the differences between a rabbit and a hare, the latter of which can be seen in winter...
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A snowy tree well makes a good winter hare hangout.

While snowshoeing along an old trail we met up with another on “snowshoes”. This was a wild personality in the form of a snowshoe rabbit, more properly known as snowshoe hare. There are subtle but distinct differences between a rabbit and a hare.

We were headed up a fairly steep south-facing slope on a trail closely bounded on both sides by a thick stand of evergreens. Some seedlings and young evergreens were scattered along the route. Abruptly, ahead of us, a snowshoe hare ran up the trail from one of these young evergreens. For a moment it stopped, broadside and motionless, giving a nice view of its perky, erect, long ears and well camouflaged white form against the snow.

Now, the only reason it was easily spotted in a motionless position was because it had been moving.

Otherwise, being pure white and sitting in a snow-blanketed landscape, spotting it wouldn’t have been so easy. Snowshoe hare are usually pure white in winter and brownish gray in summer, hence the name varying hare. They are hard to spot in these seasons but in spring and fall they are sometimes less camouflaged, when they are transitioning from one coat to the other. I have seen them wearing a dappled brown and white coat when the snow was totally gone. Imagine a summertime coat in a late spring snowfall. True rabbits do not usually change coat colour from season to season.

This snowshoer shortly headed away from the trail and into the forest where it was seen no more.

I went back to the young evergreen to determine what the snowshoe hare had been doing under the tree. Sure enough, there was a rounded cavity in the snow in the outer part of the tree well. Overhead were sloping branches that extended down to the snow providing an excellent “roof” for a resting or hiding snowshoe. Some of the branch tips appeared to have been nibbled. The tree-well, or sheltered hollow under a tree, was about a foot deep, providing, along with concealing branches, an excellent hare hangout.

Our snowshoe companion demonstrated, in his getaway, like its prairie counterpart, the jackrabbit, the true escape strategy of members of the hare clan: run. In contrast, the rabbit, excepting cottontails, heads into its burrow. They need to do that as their legs aren’t the greatest for speed and jumping. The hare depends on its powerful “rear drive” to make its escape. The long legs and large “snowshoe” feet enable that over ground or powdery snow.

When a hare is born, it is “rabbit ready to go”. Its eyes are open, it is well furred and able to fend for itself in a few short hours. A rabbit is born hairless and it can’t see where it is going until later, and needs the mother’s care for some time. I am told that baby rabbits are called kittens or bunnies, and, by people that seem to know, baby hare are called leverets. That sounds like the name of a rock, leverite (“lev ’er right there”, according to the Alphy Dictionary of Rare Rocks).

Would you be a hare or would you be a rabbit? Either way, you would need something to eat. If it’s being a rabbit, soft plant parts will do. In that case you might want to hibernate in our winters. Whereas a hare’s, although I have seen them eating grass and dandelion flowers, staple is harder plant parts, such as bark, twigs, buds and leaves of evergreen trees, like pine needles. This menu suits them to be active all year round, snow or no snow. They are all around adapted for both seasons, for northern climes and harsh weather, which, to them, is business as usual.

Lest we forget: A menu of plant-based foods is the healthiest and most efficient you will find anywhere in the Kootenays. The most efficient crop is a plant crop. Eat locally grown!

Ed McMackin is a biologist by profession but a naturalist and hiker by nature. He can be reached at 250-866-5747.