Nature Watch, with Ron Freethy

EARLY spring is the time when young mammals start to find their feet and then their independence.

Many mammals, including the domestic cat, are playful because they need to develop the muscles needed for them to catch and kill their food or, in the case of rabbits, to escape from predators.

Both the fox and the badger start their breeding season in February.

The idea is that once the male and female have mated the cubs take some time to develop inside the mother.

For the fox the time is 52 days but for the badger things are more complicated. The fertile badger egg can be held in what is called delayed implantation but once it starts to develop it is about 50 days before the cubs are born.

The development of the egg is started off when the daylight hours increase.

The young are born and for a while they are fed by their mother on milk.

All this is going on while the weather is cold and it takes great skill to catch food.

At the time the cubs are starting out on their own there is more food and there are more hours of daylight for them to learn the skills needed to catch prey.

During February and March rabbits continue to breed. Judging by how many rabbits there are it is a surprise to find that they were only introduced into England by the Normans in the 12th century.

At the time they were kept by a man called a warrener, which is where the surname comes from.

It is interesting to find how many of our surnames have connections with nature. If your name is Pate it means your ancestors once lived in a wood with badgers in it.

An old name for badger was pate and another was brock.

The name Brocklebank means a bank where the badger lived.

Since Norman times the rabbit has increased so fast that it is now a pest.

Some still die of a disease called myxomatosis and many are eaten by foxes and birds such as buzzards.

Young rabbits are eaten by both red and grey squirrels.

Neither the red squirrel or the grey squirrel hibernates and their breeding season also starts in February in the south of England or March in the north.

The only two mammals in our part of England which regularly hibernate are hedgehogs and the bats.

Hedgehogs usually stay asleep until well into March but the common pipistrelle bat often wakes up during the evenings of late February and early March following a warm day.

The warmth of the sun wakes up the insects on which the bat feeds.