Farmer John Wheeler takes pleasure in seeing the hares that thrive on his land. “I was out one evening recently and I saw six hares on the skyline and there may have been more that I didn’t see,” he is pleased to report.

“This is the time of year when they get together to defend their territory. Later in the spring I see the young leverets around.”

Hare populations are threatened on many fronts, but in several areas of Oxfordshire, conservation measures to protect their habitat are giving them the best possible opportunities to flourish.

Brown hares are a species considered in need of conservation, with numbers having dropped in the past 50 years by as much as 75 per cent. They are included in the UK Biodiversity Action Plan but are not a protected species.

Through agricultural environment improvement schemes, farmers and landowners are encouraged to leave areas of ground in which they can find cover and sources of food.

Advice is available from many sources, including the Farming and Wildlife Advisory Group and the Game Conservancy.

Farmers are themselves concerned for the welfare of their hares.

Mr Wheeler, who farms in the Vale of the White Horse, said: “I have been doing my best for many years to protect the brown hares. I also leave ground-nesting plots for birds. I have two two-hectare plots, which are used mainly by stone curlews, lapwings and grey partridges.

“I have undersown stubble. I plant rye grass and clover at the same time as the spring barley, in early March, and these will be there for wildlife after the barley crop is harvested in late July or in August.

“There will also be sufficient height there to provide cover for the hares.”

The advice from the Farming and Wildlife Advisory Group (FWAG) to farmers such as Mr Wheeler, who know that they have hares on their land, includes provision of cover on field margins and headlands.

Of particular importance to the safety of hares is action at the time of the cutting of hay and grain crops.

The machinery should work outwards from the centre of a field, to enable the hares and other wildlife to escape to safety, rather than circling inwards towards the centre and trapping the wildlife in a small section in the middle.

The Windrush Project and the Thames Valley Environmental Record Centre have carried out surveys on numbers of hares. The work took place on farmland near Witney and farther north in the Wychwood area.

The greatest number of hares was observed at the northern location, rather than in the more southerly ones. As many as 46 were counted in a survey carried out in the spring of 2007, and 42 in that of 2008. This was an early morning exercise, with a survey team working in a co-ordinated pattern, and the findings were considered encouraging.

“We were amazed at how many we saw,” said Jane Bowley of the Wychwood Project. “I think that brown hares are holding their own.”

Living in the open, hares are vulnerable to predators, including foxes. They have disguise from the colouring of their fur and protection through their habit of lying in forms — the shallow depressions in the ground in which they can conceal most of their bodies.

In arable crops they can be completely hidden. They have acute eyesight and hearing, which can detect the approach of their predators before they themselves are seen and their legendary speed enables them swiftly to put a distance between themselves and the approaching danger.

The leverets are born prepared for spending life in an exposed above-ground situation. They arrive fully-furred and with their eyes open, unlike the young of rabbits, which are more vulnerable when born, but will be spending their early days in their underground burrows.

Hares are chiefly nocturnal, grazing at night and resting during the day, while digesting the previous night’s forage. In the winter months they may choose to find shelter in woodland areas.

Their breeding success may be affected by the type of spring and summer weather, for, as well as being susceptible to predators, the leverets may not survive spells of cold weather Although the females may have up to four litters a year, each with probably two or three young, not all may survive.

Even when newly-born, the leverets do not have their mother beside them. Placing each one in its own form, usually where there is protection from long grass, she grazes at some distance from her family, then returns every evening so that they can suckle until they are weaned at the age of about a month.

This apparent desertion is another survival technique, to avoid drawing attention of predators to the forms where the next generation are lying. After weaning, they will be sufficiently independent to be able to graze for themselves.

The favoured habitat for brown hares is arable land — less so land used for grazing of livestock. The Game Conservancy points out that the loss of the ‘patchwork quilt’ of smaller fields means that the hares have to move further to find fresh forage. At one time, hares could move easily from meadow to arable land, but their replacement by larger acreages, particularly where these are used for crop-growing, makes it more difficult.

In winter, they may only find grazing on field boundaries, grass tracks and roadside verges.

In a mixed agricultural pattern they can move short distances more regularly, in order to find a suitable food supply. The Game Conservancy suggest that on arable farmland, more areas of grass should be provided for them, in the form of wide strips, patches of pasture and corners of fields.

On livestock farms, where fields are grazed by stock or cut for silage in summer, there may be little cover for the leverets to hide from their predators. Help can still be provided by fencing off banks and the ground beside ditches. If the grazing stock do not reach into these areas, the grass there can grow taller.

Special sowings of birdseed mixtures will also benefit hares, with varieties such as kale, triticale and quinoa providing food in summer and cover in winter.

Because of the loss of so much grassland habitat, conservation organisations such as the Berkshire, Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire Wildlife Trust (BBOWT) are working to create and maintain more of the undisturbed grassland areas which brown hares need in order to thrive.

Visitors to some of the BBOWT reserves may be fortunate enough to see hares — reserves where they are often observed include Sydlings Copse, near Headington; Bernwood Meadows, near Horton-cum-Studley; Chimney Meadows at Aston, near Bampton; and Whitecross Green, near Bicester.

There may even be a chance of seeing two hares boxing. This is not territorial behaviour between two males, the bucks, or jacks, but a doe, a female, discouraging the attentions of a buck which she does not regard as the ideal mate.

While mostly seen in the spring, this behaviour can take place at any time between January and September.