Foxglove

Here, the dog stopped, smelling the ground in one spot and then one more, turning her amber eyes to me and then back to the grass. Chunks of rabbit fleck, torn out under force rather than carelessly cast from a moulting coat, and two small patches of blood.

At first you might think that a predator had caught a rabbit, and there are times that, from this evidence, you would be right, but not this time. Territorial marking shows that here was a doe rabbit in season, that had skirmished either with another doe in a territorial display, or else had fought off the attentions of a buck.

Or maybe two buck rabbits had been fighting over the doe? In January, too. But here in the South, rabbits breed all year round, though in winter many of the young do not survive.

Past this little drama, I saw a pile of hen pheasant feathers, where the fox had caught her and taken her off beside the greenhouses to eat, and there the rest of her was lying. Round the corner by the bonfire lay the mortal remains of her mate, probably left by the same fox, now too full to eat another pheasant but not to kill one.

For full feature see West Sussex Gazette January 28