The commonest species are often the most difficult to photograph in the wild and one project that really springs to mind in terms of challenge and difficulty for me has always been bunnies. I suppose I could have found a location where the bunnies were super used to people being around and never minded at all, sitting to pose for me but then for me that would negate the reason for me photographing them really. I want to document more natural behaviour with minimal influence from man.

I have to say this is still an ongoing project and will probably outlast me but it is really fun to challenge yourself with your photography and fieldcraft. It was bunnies that I turned to during the dreaded first lockdown of 2020 too, they were the only mammals of note that I was able to get near on my daily jaunts out of the house and they kept me entertained for hours on end. We were so lucky with the weather in the UK at that time that it was actually a pleasure to sit with them and watch their antics. The cast of characters was phenomenal, I couldn’t believe just how accurate Watership Down really was, the Hazels, Fivers and the General Woundworts, and the feuds and fights that go on between families of rabbits, puts East Enders to shame. They are most definitely not the cute, cuddly little bundles of fluff that we all think they are! Life as a European rabbit is tough both avoiding predators as well as upsetting your own kind.

My first baby bunny images I remember taking whilst waiting for Roe deer on the country estate where I used to work. They would pop out of the hedgerows and banks and play happily in the sun around my 4x4. Skittish and alert to everything they rarely relaxed and would dive for cover through the nettles and buttercups at the slightest shadow cast by a buzzard or rustle of the wind in the oak trees. They were never out during the good daylight and always sat with their backs to the sun as it gradually descended at dusk. Their behaviour totally different to their cousins, the European hare, who they often get mistaken for. Their strategy is to run for the cover of their warrens, multiple entrances and exits litter the place and are constantly being renewed or abandoned depending on their usage, or sometimes just through collapse of the earthworks around them, through incessant burrowing.

My lockdown project was in a pony paddock, sitting amongst the piles of dung and occassionally being nuzzled by the ponies themselves. Dear old Jethro the cob being most bemused by the human lying prostrate in his paddock and or using him as a mobile hide so that I could trick the bunnies so I could edge ever nearer without them skiddaddling for cover, or sat on his upturned feed bucket to try and avoid the electric fencing. Eventually, my best luck came with the slightly naive youngsters, the ones that were so trusting of me really. My nemesis the old scar-faced bucks who scowled at me and at others from the burrow entrances beneath the hawthorn hedge. There were the scouts too - the do-gooders who would give you away and grass you up to the bucks if you so much as glanced in their direction. With so many animals all over the place you couldn’t even wiggle your toes without giving the game away and then it could be hours and to start with days before anyone would trust you again. I suppose without the usual background noises and smells around too - they were at more of any advantage than usual, showing how ridiculously inadequate we are in the natural world.

One or two of the warren I was able to gain the trust of over a period of a few weeks, so much so that they would even rest and sleep in front of me, having had a good squirm around in the dust of the paddock near to the water trough. It was a real honour to be shown that level of trust and for them to feel content enough to groom themselves too. Crawling around amongst the horse and rabbit poo could not have been more pleasurable! By the middle of may however, it was game over as lockdowns started to ease and the grasses started flowering obscuring a good ground level view of my friends.

What an extraordinary time in history and in the world of rabbits without traffic, without people, just me, them and my camera. Dare I say it? to me it was a slice of heaven cake.