Roe deer

 I often see roe deer in the distance when I'm walking in Weardale, but it's usually just bobbing white tails in the distance as they bound away amongst the trees. But these two - a mature doe and her almost full-grown fawn - were unusually cooperative and hung around long enough for me to take some pictures.

The fawn has a darker, rougher coat and smaller ears.

Something Lurking in the Undergrowth

We thought at first that this was a large dog, lurking in the undergrowth at Holkham NNR in Norfolk, until be realised that we were looking at a muntjac. They are so small that they can easily conceal themselves in a patch of brambles.

These miniature deer, first introduced at Woburn from China in 1901, have spread rapidly throughout much of England over the last three decades and are now well established as far north as Yorkshire, with small populations in Scotland. They can have a devastating effect on the ground flora of woodlands, grazing the flower buds of bluebells, orchids and most other woodland wild flowers, including rarities like the oxlip. There's an interesting article on the ecological effect of the deer population explosion of native and introduced deer in the April 2010 issue of the excellent British Wildlife magazine.

Deer at Dawn

The fog hadn’t long been cleared by the rising sun and a stiff breeze when we can face-to-face with this roe deer as we rounded a bend in a footpath near Wolsingham in Weardale. It’s hard to tell which of us was more surprised but what is certain is that I was a bit slow off the mark, so all I got was this picture of it bounding off, flashing its distinctive alarm signal – the heart-shaped patch of white hairs on its rump. I guess it didn’t smell or hear us approaching, as we were downwind and the sound of wind through the autumn leaves drowned out our footfall.

A little later we encountered this doe and her fawn on the edge of a field and this time we weren’t spotted until we’d had a good look at them grazing in the early morning sun.

This fawn would have been born last spring and will stay with its mother through the winter.

Eventually they picked up our scent, and were gone in an instant

Roe Deer Shedding Velvet

Luck was with us this morning, when we were out walking in the Derwent Valley hear Edmundbyers. We managed to get within about 50 metres of this roe buck that was sitting on the hillside enjoying the sunshine. He didn’t seem to notice us approaching downwind, with our silhouettes below the skyline. His coat looks a bit mangy but I think that’s because he’s shedding his long winter coast and acquiring his shorter summer pelage, but the really interesting features are his antlers. He would have shed the old antlers by Christmas and has now grown a new set. One is still covered in skin (‘velvet’) but he’s very recently rubbed the skin off the other, against the bark of the tree probably, and it’s still covered with fresh blood (double click the top image for a larger image, that makes this clearer).