On Saturday 9 May, knowing the site would quickly become busy with dog-walkers and other visitors, I caught an early morning bus from Weymouth town centre to Ferrybridge for a wander around that part of Chesil Beach. I was scanning the water’s edge of the Fleet lagoon with my binoculars, checking for any waders or shore birds, when I noticed movement amongst the stones on the opposite side of the water. At first I thought it was an off-lead dog but quickly realised the creature was not moving as a dog would.

A second animal appeared behind the first and they began to run across the stones, chasing each other. Looking at the length of their legs and the size of their long floppy ears, I soon realised these were Brown hares (Lepus europaeus).

As they’re usually found living on farm fields and in grassland, I was amazed to see these handsome mammals in this seemingly harsh environment, but the website for the Dorset Wildlife Trust’s Wild Chesil Centre confirms that Brown hares live and breed on the shingle at Chesil Beach. There is certainly a wide variety of vegetation in the local wildflowers for the hares to feed on, and the stones would be good for heat retention in cold weather, as well as providing excellent camouflage for the hares once they were hunkered down. So, perhaps this was not as harsh an environment as I had initially thought.

At the same time as I was moving around behind the Wild Chesil Centre buildings to try to get better views of the hares, they were gambolling across the shore-side vegetation, getting closer to the Centre, so we were eventually no more than about 20 metres apart. It was fabulous to watch the hares up close, but then a couple of people arrived and let their large barking dogs off their leads, causing the hares to race off across the shingle to safety.