Given the good weather forecast for today, I thought I'd head back up into the Peak District early this morning and see what I could see.

With the sun low in the sky, autumn and winter light, when we get a good sunny day, is arguably the best time of year to be out with the camera.

Having had some degree of success with the mountain hares last winter, I was up and out early this morning to see how they were getting on. Rather than heading off to my usual site, I decided to give another place a go - somewhere I'd been before that's great for red grouse but not somewhere I'd seen hares before, although it was likely they'd be around.

It was beautiful morning, the grouse were out in force and I spent a good ten minutes watching a pair of buzzards soaring over the moorland.

In the end, I only found one hare, and he wasn't coming out of his warm spot in the heather for anything. Keeping my distance so as not to spook him, I managed to find a couple of angles where I could see through the heather where the light was decent.

With the heather being quite thick and the hares clearly not out of their brown summer coats yet, it wasn't surprising I only saw one. I probably walked past a dozen without realising.

Interestingly, it looks like the white winter coat is starting to moult through from around his eyes. I noticed towards the end of last winter and into spring that brown patches around the eyes were the first sign of the winter coat to go, so I wonder if it works the same in reverse.