Although we are now 2 weeks into autumn the weather is still hot. The temperature has been above 30 degrees for quite some time and today was 38 degrees in Adelaide with tomorrow tipped to be 39 degrees. Thankfully where we are the Adelaide Hills is usually 2-3 degrees cooler in the summer, unfortunately we are also cooler in the winter but I prefer this to the other way around.
Across summer the trees have been deep watered every fortnight to keep them ticking over. As the season became longer and hotter growth had effectively stopped compared to the significant gains made early on. In the last week or so the trees seem to know it should be autumn and appear to be getting ready for another growth spurt prior to dormancy over winter. As a bit of encouragement and to make sure they have everything they need they were given some fertiliser prior to watering this weekend.
When watering I always wander around and check the sprinkler under each tree for blockages. This time out of the corner of my eye I noticed something moving amongst the grass under one of our elms. WIth a closer look I found two small leverets (baby hares) struggling under the water from the sprinkler. I didn’t want to handle them more than I had to incase the mother rejected them due to unfamiliar scents so I ran to the shed to find a container to put them in. By the time I got back one of them had given up and looked worryingly dead. I got them out into the sun and called Dad over who happened to be helping me with the watering. They were saturated from the sprinkler and after not being able to find anything that was going to be scent free we had to dry them in our shirts.
There are many hares that live in the area and we have seen leverets in the past but never any this young. The one that looked dead seemed to respond well to the warmth and went from not moving to being able to turn itself over and sit with its sibling. One advantage to the hot weather is the sun and warm breeze continued to dry the little leverets after the initial going over with a shirt.
When we had first arrived I had noticed a hare run off from the area where we found the leverets. This would have been the mum after she had tucked them into their little hiding hole for safe collection later. Because we couldn’t move them we had to switch the sprinklers off and swap to a different watering circuit. We set them up with some dry grass and left them for mum to pick up, most likely after dark. Three hours later when the water was switched off they weren’t there.
