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And I was right. This morning, the bunnies had departed and left the nest empty. I’ll still leave the table out for a while, and hay and fresh water, in case they need to come back and feel safe. Jesse will be disappointed when I tell them that the bunnies are gone.
The last photos:





Last night, by the time I got home it was too dark to photograph them, but I did go out to check on them, and as soon as I lifted the grass they came to greet me, which was a surprise. There was no jumpiness, no fiestiness (even ‘Fiest’ was nice and relaxed). I will check on them again this morning because I noticed that at 9pm last night mamma had not fed them yet, which was strange.





We photographed them this evening at around 8pm, and I noticed that all the bunnies are very active and inquisitive, except for one little one that stays back and looks quite sad and forlorn. This particular one is one of the larger ones, so it’s not the runt of the litter. Looking back over the past couple of days’ photos, I can see that this little one was already looking like that then, I just hadn’t noticed it while all the bunnies were inactive. Hopefully it’ll be alright, we’ll know soon enough.

















The table worked really well! Inspecting the nest half an hour or so ago everyone was warm and dry, and again with full bellies… mom must have checked on them early today, darting in and out between rain showers. You can see in the first picture that baby has a rounded belly - this indicates a recent meal of milk. In the previous photographs they look long and skinny, as those had been taken before their mother made her daily dusk rounds.
The babies are developing nicely, their fur is fully in now, even under their tails, and it won’t be long now before they’ll start opening their eyes. Once they start wondering from the nest it is going to be so much fun to watch them play!










This morning I checked on the babies and dug a couple out so that I could determine how many there were and if mom had fed them during the night. There were 5 bunnies in the nest, all with rounded bellies which meant mom had fed them very recently. I covered the nest back up and decided to return in the evening to take photographs once it was a little cooler. I also dug through my photos of Sienna’s litter back in 2008 to determine how old these babies were:


I was able to see that the wild bunnies are 5 days old. Sienna’s babies are Satin Angoras which means they have much larger muzzles, but the likeness is obvious.
This evening I returned with my son Jesse to look at the bunnies and photograph them. Mom had not fed them yet. I noticed that the late afternoon sun is hitting the nest directly, so I placed a log and planter to cast shade on the bunnies. Temps today were around 95 degrees, so direct sun, even the late afternoon one, can be devastatingly hot. I’ll keep a photo log of the bunnies as they grow, I think it will be a lot of fun, especially if they grow up to be relatively tame.
Tonight’s photographs:





