Photographing Wild Deer

The weather hasn't really been particularly conducive to any mist forming recently. It's too mild overnight, and the forecast is predicting a heat wave for the next week or so, so definitely no misty photography in the foreseeable future.

I decided to go for a wander in the park with just my telephoto lens attached to my camera body, and no other equipment. My camera bag was wonderfully light! I headed out after lunch, a usually unthinkable time for me to go and take photographs. The sun was behind some high cloud, and the light was very soft. I had a very enjoyable walk, and ended up near a number of groups of red deer. It is the birthing season, and there are now some very cute little calves that have been recently born. The hinds and calves hang out in groups and the hinds are very protective of their babies. At this time of the year they need to be given lots of space, or they can be aggressive if they feel they are being threatened. All my photos were taken a good distance away, and some of them cropped during processing.

The stags were also grouped together. The main activity seems to be eating grass. The vibe is so chilled that it's amazing to think that in about 10 weeks from now they'll be fighting one another in the rut.

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I spent some time hanging out a safe distance from a group of mature stags. They were not remotely bothered by my presence.

This chap below was enjoying some fresh leaves. It is a great illustration of why the tree canopies in the park have flat bottoms. The leaf line sits exactly at the point where the deer cannot reach the leaves. Anything below this point will be eaten.

Here's a link to one of my older posts that has a number of photos that illustrate the flat bottomed, deer nibbled, tree canopy shape:

https://peakd.com/hive-194913/@cathgothard/misty-sunrise

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After a while the deer decided to wander over in my direction. Their line of travel brought them pretty close, but they were definitely more interested in food than in me, so I remained still and watched them walk by to their destination, which was another tree with just reachable leaves.

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These young deer were grazing, when a flock of starlings swooped down upon them. It happened so suddenly that I'm super happy I managed to grab a shot. The shutter speed was 1/400th of a second, which was more than fast enough to capture leisurely grazing deer, but not fast enough to completely freeze the motion of the starlings. I rather like that the starlings have a little motion blur, it's a lovely graphic illustration of their relative speed.

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Lastly, a few photos of some calves.

Sticking close to mum.

Taken at 400mm and cropped.

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There is a full moon next week, and there is a potential plan to go and shoot my first ever moonrise. If that happens, I'll publish a post about that next Saturday. Fingers crossed for clear skies. 🤞

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