Recently, we've been very worried that we'd lost our rabbits. There used to be plenty, along the hedgerows around the fields, digging up the house lawns, even threatening people's precious garden plants. We used to see them hopping along the road in the direction of a neighbour's house because she fed them. She had a favourite she called "Mrs Rabbit". Over the last couple of months we've hardly seen any.
There was evidence that some might still be around - this small scrape had a few rabbit droppings in it - but many of the....We know that, a couple of years ago, myxomatosis swept through the local rabbit population, and that people used to find them in a pitiable state, but we've seen no distressed rabbits.
Today's snow has clarified matters. On our walk up into the forestry this morning we saw a few rabbit tracks - not as many as we might have expected but enough to prove that there are sill some around. However, near our house we found two sets of tracks....
....one, from bottom right to top left, clearly a rabbit, the other, heading towards our neighbour's house, possibly a fox.