They love lettuce and almost any leafy green. However, if you start feeding wild animals artificially, sometimes that can cause population explosions and can be a recipe for problems for the animals and your neighbors.

For creating a habitat for them I highly recommend two of Russel Link's books:

Living with Wildlife in the Pacific Northwest

Landscaping for Wildlife

Both excellent resources for creating habitat for our wild critters in the Northwest and devotes a lot to the rabbit and hare. He recommends brush piles 3 feet high by 5 feet wide for shelter. They feed on wildflowers, plantain, weeds, and crops during the summer and conifer needles, buds, bark, twigs and anything green they can find in the winter.

You might want to let some areas of lawn be wilder and not mow as much. You already have a pond for water for them.

You probably are giving them what they need already, but if you can check these books out at the library, or buy them for your bookshelf, I think you will like them.

Um, I hate to be a grinch, lol... but are you sure these are wild bunnies? Like cats, most of the urban populations of bunnies running around are escaped pets and their descendants. The native snowshoe hares and rabbits are rare and vanishing both sides of the mountains, espeically any where near urban and suburban areas. If you are in the city or sub-urbs, I would be surprised if you have anything other than domestic wildlings. Encouraging populations of these escaped critters (whether they are rabbits, cats, snakes, parrots or whatever) is generally frowned upon by people trying to manage native wildlife for a number of reasons from habitat loss due to competition or destruction, disease problems and in some cases, hybridization with remnant wild species. Bunnies in particular are pretty happy to hybridize with any other bunny that catches their eye, lol.

That being said... if you want to offer them habitat, their diet is pretty cosmopolitan and they will eat a wide range of leafy plants, including quite a few you probably DON'T want them to, lol. Many of the cabbages and kales will self seed, so that might be an excellent source of leafy vegetables for them, especially since they seem to find them tasty. If you can find seeds now, these are good winter crops.

But more important than that is hiding places. Rabbits have such a high rate of reproduction because they are preferred prey for many medium to larger sized predators. Most house cats aren't big enough to take on a full grown rabbit (though they will take the kits if they can catch them out of the burrows), but coons and dogs will, as will bobcat, coyote and larger hawks and eagles if they can. Burrows are often situated at the edges of brush piles or dense shrubbery where the bunnies can hide the entrance, and themselves as they pop out, taking a careful look around before venturing out into the open. If you can clear an area slightly between shrubs and put down a pallet or two, this may well prove an good "roof" for a burrow for them, especially if you can put it between overarching shrubbery. This will prevent dogs or coyotes digging into the burrows, and if you walk on them will help prevent them from collapsing on the bunnies, too.

Bunnies prefer a kind of savanah edge to open grassland kind of feel most of the time, though they will also deal rather well with taller grasses and such too. This in effect is what many gardens are, too. Setting your mower as high as you can, will give them plenty to nibble on and open areas where they can hopefully see predators before they can get to them.

Oh, and I shouldn't have to mention, don't put chemicals on your lawn if you want them to stick around. Even fertilizers may not be good for them. Weedy lawns with clover, buttercups, dandelions etc will give them more to foriage on than a grass only lawn, too.

Speaking of which, from what I hear one of the most annoying things about rabbits is they tend to go around nipping all the flowers off in spring, lol. So be warned... they may be cute but there is a reason most gardeners find them a nuisance! Oh, and protect your fruit trees and such in winter. If they get hungry in winter, they tend to nibble the bark off the base of trees.

LoL! I didn't realize bunny's could be a threat. Thank you HarleyLady but I was just concerned about the little guys that come around once in awhile, didn't intend to have a yard full!

Greenman, since I live in a pretty small town, and the area I live in isn't woodsy or wide open, the bunny's that I have seen, I think came from the brush and trees that are (were) along the river bank which is just a couple of blocks away from my little town lot. There may have been at one time or other someone who had rabbits and then let them go, but I know of none of my neighbors that have had any for years. (the one's my dad raised... he ate).

That aside, you may be right on domestic vrs. wild but to me it doesn't matter. While walking the river I hardlly ever see any of the little critters anymore, as I said, between the city cutting so much of the brush and trees, and, neighborhood cats, I was supprised to see any of them anyway.

Thank you for the food and shelter suggestions. Also meant to mention, I don't to chemicals and very little fertilizing. And thanks for the tip on nipping flower buds..... gotta keep an eye on the squirrels for the flowers and bark too, lol!

Linda

Snacking on rosehips?

Oh yes, I should have looked at the leaves. Duh!

Ugh, another weed, lol. Um, and not sure if you realized, but kinnikinnik is in the heath family, with rhodies and huckleberries and madrona. Cotoneaster is in the rose family, which is huge, everythign from goatsbeard to apples, raspberries and roses. The leaves and fruits on this one are similar to kinnikinnik though. The birds love these though, and tend to spread them around. I personally think this is a candidate for the noxious weed list.

That rabbit does rather look like the wild ones. Are you high enough in the hills to get snowshoes? That is what it looks like to me, though that species is rather rare in lowlands. I'm not sure we have any other rabits native to the western lowland forests though. I think all the pigmy rabits were native to the eastern shrub steppes, and the bigger jackrabits are definitely sagebrush and Ponderosa country critters. Which is one reason why I reasoned before that these are more likely domestic rabits gone feral... lowland Western Washington at least is not natural habitat for rabits. They are cute though, lol.

Originally posted by Phlox Picture's of two of the culprits. This image not so clear, taken through window at an agle.

After my planted 72 Redwood trees around our house in Cal. grew to over 10 ft. tall, the wild Cottontail rabbits started to set up housekeeping under the lowest branches, junipers, lavenders,etc.. Today, they are over 30 ft. tall, and there are now dozens of the little Cottontails. This rabbit in the photo is the very immage of the Cottontail rabbits in our yard. Definately not a domestic feral rabbit.     

AND, didn't realize this was a WEED!

As I said, I have not seen any birds eat the berry's on this bush and have only seen a couple of seedlings come up from the fallen seeds. And the only bird I have seen eating the kinnikinnik seeds was a Robin on a very cold freezing day, like, if there had been something else available it wouldn't have eaten them.

I'll keep a closer eye out on both the bushes and see if they will need to be pulled up..... although, maybe just striping the berrys off and leaving the leaves for the bunny's??? just a thought!

I live at sea level GM, so I wouldn't think it would be a snowshoe, although the back legs seem to be pretty long. The larger one of the two I saw, looked like an adult, was aprox. 12 inches or so long. I haven't looked bunny's up on the internet but I could go along with it just being a cotton tail.

Guess it's time to get rid of yet another plant, don't want the birds planting them where they don't belong.

NOW, what should I get to replace it with?? Ok, how about another service berry?? Ya, ok, that sounds good, then I can share the berry's with the birds. Thanks for solving the delima GMan!

Thanks for the heads-up on where to find out more about the rabbit's. If I end up with a herd of them, I'll call for back-up, LOL!!

Decision's, decision's??

Ok, so, since I already have 2 of the Evergreen hucks and 2 of the Vaccinium parvifolium, and 2 of the Ribes sanguineum and the spot I will need to fill gets mostly sun and is dryish, I think gooseberry is out, BUT, I really like the sound of the Ribes odoratum which I have been thinking about for the last two or three years anyway.

Yup, thats the one I will try to find to replace the cotoneaster.

Thanks for helping me decide what to do GM.

(and from a memory: I used to pick the evergreen hucks and freeze them and it was one of my grandaughters favorite things to do when she was little... she would ask for them and eat them while they were still frozen.)

good to know, thanks haika