Coffee Table Book of: Rabbits (Paperback)

Description

Coffee Table Book of: Rabbits is a large format book of rabbits and hares, printed edge to edge in colour, one picture to a page and the widest carried across two: wild rabbits and cottontails, brown, mountain and snowshoe hares, domestic breeds of many shapes and coats, young rabbits from their first days, ears, eyes, whiskers and paws seen close, and the meadows, heaths, hedges, dunes and woods where they live, at many hours and in every season.

Wild rabbits graze beside the burrow mouths of a sandy warren, sit up tall at the edge of a hay meadow, keep watch on a cliff top of pink thrift above the sea and nibble the grass among red poppies beside golden wheat. They hop across the dunes among marram grass and rest on bare sand in purple heather, graze in the dawn mist and in autumn drizzle, wash their faces, flop on their sides in the shade, rise to nibble a bramble leaf, sit in the snow beneath a hawthorn hung with red berries and wait beneath a large full moon.

The hares stand apart: a brown hare upright in young barley, another crouched in its form on a misty morning, two boxing in a ploughed field and one racing across golden stubble, a leveret among buttercups, a black tailed jackrabbit among sagebrush at sunrise, a mountain hare half white in the spring thaw and wholly white on a snowy slope at dawn, a white hare of the far north on a lichen covered rock and a snowshoe hare beneath snow laden spruce.

Young rabbits huddle in a fur lined nest, sit among tulips, peer from a burrow and leap high above a spring lawn, and a young lop holds one ear up and one down. Seen close are ears glowing in the low sun, a high set eye, fanned whiskers, a soft nose, furred front paws, a wide yawn, the crown of a lop, a young face and the amber eyes of a brown hare.

Short notes run through the book, on how rabbits and hares live, feed and escape danger, how their young are born and raised, and how the breeds differ in ear, coat and colour: the wild rabbit once lived in only a small part of its present range and was carried far beyond it, rabbits graze grasses and low plants, and eat leaves, shoots and crops where they can find them, young hares, called leverets, are born furred and open eyed, far more developed than newborn rabbits, and the snowshoe hare is named for its big furry hind feet, which spread its weight on soft snow.

Printed in full colour on heavy 150gsm coated paper at 216 x 279 mm (8.5 x 11 inches), as a paperback.