Falling back on my ‘safety’ choice this week, since nothing exciting or unique presented itself, even when I went out looking. I might have had some lightning, had it not started raining just as I was heading out.
After spotting a very young fawn on the property some weeks back, we saw no young deer at all, though we suspected that at least one of the deer visiting for the corn was a parent with her fawn stashed away safely somewhere until it was old enough to be weaned. Yet we went for quite a while with no sign of any young’uns, then a singular appearance with mom, and then nothing. Until about a week ago.
These are, naturally, white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus,) and there were actually two fawns, but of course one of them wandered out of my ability to frame them together as soon as the camera was in hand. As alert as they appear here though, they weren’t very concerned with my presence up on the deck, and soon continued foraging; I even missed one of them attempting to nurse with mom discouraging it.
After a few minutes, I did something incautious and the fawns spooked, bounding away for only a short distance, probably discouraged from this paranoid behavior by mom who was still foraging industriously. They regrouped in another portion of the lawn (a term I use loosely since we let the backyard go unchecked.)
Actually, to get them all looking up simultaneously, I had to make several whistles and clicks until they got too curious, otherwise I always had at least one with its nose buried in the tall grasses. And again, this didn’t last long.
I’m not 100% sure of the actions of the one fawn here; while too many people would claim it was going for a kiss, I suspect it was trying to sample what mom was eating, which she did not oblige. The fawns’ behavior was split between a certain air of independence, sometimes wandering quite far from mom, and the typical neediness of a juvenile. Someone that knows deer better than I could potentially use this to pin down their age.
Speaking with a neighbor recently (okay, texting,) we found that she had a couple of orphaned fawns visiting her backyard regularly, believing that the mother had been hit by a car and died off the back of her property. We might have seen one of them a little earlier, since a lone fawn had come by to forage among the ducks’ corn.
This one was clearly larger and thus older than the pair still with their mother, the spots fading away. We knew enough about their habits to know that they don’t go independent that quickly, tending to stick together at least until breeding season in the winter, so we’d wondered about mom. There’s no easy way to tell them apart, save for a young adult doe visiting over the winter that had different enough coloration to distinguish her from others. Despite their overly-generic appearance, we’ll still try to monitor them as best we can.
By the way, this was written a few hours ahead of posting, so the photos were uploaded in July and thus beat the previous record by (at least) four images. I know you’re as excited as I am…