Hare in the Meadow (gouache style)

The brown hare is larger than a rabbit, with long black-tipped ears, golden-brown fur and long, powerful back legs that make it one of Britain's fastest land mammals. It doesn't dig a burrow, but rests in a shallow hollow in grass called a form. Young hares, called leverets, are born furred and with their eyes open. In early spring, boxing hares are usually a female fending off a male.

Hares are animals of open farmland and meadow, but gardens and smallholdings at the edge of fields can still help them. Leave some long grass uncut through summer, and cut a wildflower meadow from late July into September, once the flowers have set seed. Mow from the centre outwards so animals hiding in the grass can escape. Leverets left alone in a form aren't abandoned: the mother visits to feed them around dusk, so don't touch them.

A brown hare sits upright in meadow grass among daisies and clover. Sitting up is how a hare keeps watch in open ground, where there's nowhere to hide but the grass. The picture holds that alert pause, with the hare in its own habitat of long grass and wild flowers, not a garden lawn.