Each year as the days of March lengthen, I am always on the lookout for the first harbingers of spring. On a recent walk along the River Thames adjacent to Berks, Bucks and Oxon Wildlife Trust’s Chimney Meadows nature reserve, I came across a group of four ‘frenzied’ brown hares.

They were chasing each other this way and that, swerving and doubling back — I was amazed they didn’t tie themselves in knots as they ran in ever-decreasing circles. This apparently manic behaviour, a common sight in March, created the phrase ‘As mad as a March hare’.

Of course the hares weren’t actually insane; this apparently crazy behaviour is all part of courtship as they get ready for the breeding season. As I approached the group, two of them broke away and started boxing — standing on their hind legs, dancing back and forth pawing each other. I knew then that spring really had arrived! Boxing isn’t actually two rival males fighting over a potential mate but a doe, one of the females, fending off the passionate buck (the male). She isn’t quite ready to settle down yet to have a family and he needs to be put in his place! Once the doe has finally chosen a buck and mated, she can have up to four litters and a maximum of 12 leverets in a year.

Brown hares are certainly impressive creatures. They’re bigger than rabbits and have distinctive long ears with black tips. If you’re lucky enough to see a hare up close or through binoculars you’ll notice they have large, bright yellow eyes and reddish-brown ruffled fur.

They prefer to live in large fields where they make a ‘form’ — a shallow depression in the long grass, which is where the leverets are born.

Hares favour the open space because they’re less likely to be found by foxes and they crouch low in the grass to avoid being seen by birds of prey. The brown hare is our fastest wild mammal, reaching speeds of more than 40mph. Their long back legs are so strong they can kick predators, and the doe may kick a buck if she’s getting unwanted attention.

Brown hares are thought to have arrived in this country from the continent with Iron Age settlers. In Irish folklore, characters who harm hares often suffer dreadful consequences. A Cornish legend tells of a white hare darting about eerily at night among boats drawn up on the beach, as a warning to fishermen of storms on their way.

Lewis Carroll was clearly intrigued by them too and created the straw-wearing March Hare for Alice’s tea party in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.

What’s the future for the brown hare?

Because of intensive and specialised agricultural practices hares are declining in many areas. There are fewer patchworks of fields and meadows that hares prefer where they can make a form in the long grass or hide among growing crops.

At the Berks, Bucks and Oxon Wildlife Trust we use traditional and conservation methods of farming to manage our nature reserves. You’ll probably see hares at Chimney Meadows nature reserve, Wells Farm at Little Milton, and in the open expanses of grassland at Asham Meads on Otmoor. If you’re very lucky you could have a ringside seat at a boxing contest!

To find out more about the Berks, Bucks and Oxon Wildlife Trust’s nature reserves go to www.bbowt.org.uk