Seeing hares suckling their leverets is a rare sight since they only visit their young once a day, usually after dusk.

This is to avoid detection by predators as leverets are very vulnerable during their early life.

Predation, coupled with exposure to bad weather, means that one in two leverets won’t reach maturity.

Hares have their young in a form, which is a scrape or bed among tall grass. As the leverets grow, they disperse and hide away.

They remain motionless and cleverly camouflaged deep in the vegetation, waiting for the doe to return.

The Yorkshire Wolds is real ‘hare country’ and I have seen this impossibly rare sight here.

For some reason, hares seem to favour the grassy banks which surround the gravelled car park of my gallery for raising their leverets.

I don’t know why they’ve chosen this location. It could be because they are trying to keep their young safe from foxes and buzzards.

It could also be because they like all the clover, long grasses and thick hedges. Who knows, but they obviously feel safe here.

One year, tiny leverets appeared in the two-and-a-half feet high flower borders in the courtyard entrance to my gallery.

It was fascinating to see them hidden among the perennials, but even in this smallish area they took some spotting.

At first, I thought they must have jumped up, but on reflection, I am wondering if they were actually born there.

Between three and four litters a year are the norm for hares. Each litter contains three or four young. The majority are born between March and September, but I have seen small leverets in December before.

Often five different litters are brought up around the gallery throughout the spring and summer.

But last year was particularly special. Up until then I’d seen young hares suckling just three times before. To my delight I was able to watch three leverets waiting for their mother to return each evening around 9.45pm, just as dusk fell, in clear view from my studio window.

They squatted down in the middle of the gravelled area of the car park. Like clockwork, their mother would approach along a well worn path down the bank in the corner of the car park.

She would stop at the edge of the bank to check the coast was clear before making her way across the gravel to her patiently waiting young.

Although leverets are fed only once a day, they grow fast on the mother’s rich milk supply and are normally weaned after four weeks.

Although a customer of mine, knowing that I was interested in hares, told me about his own similar experience of watching leverets being fed every night by the female near his farmyard.

For some reason these leverets definitely didn’t stop suckling at four weeks. He sent me a photograph of the leverets still suckling when they were nearly the same size as the doe.

This is something I have never heard of or have seen before and I think it is very rare. It just goes to show when it comes to wildlife there are always surprises.