Friday 14 August 2009

And now some deer videoed on our trail camera!

We're really pleased with this - we only put the camera in this location, actually quite close to our little camp in the woods, yesterday! At about 8pm last night these deer wandered through! You can see that the first is a male, the second a female, and the third another male, but with an antler missing - presumably lost in a fight. The fourth looks smaller, perhaps a younger one?

We've already moved the camera back to where we got the boar earlier in the week, but lower to the ground. I think it was pure chance that we got deer at the spot near our camp so quickly, but we'll try the camera again there at some point.

UPDATE: we're not sure now what type of deer these are - any more opinions welcome!

UPDATE 2: The consensus is that they are Fallow deer, thanks to people on the Wild About Britain forums.

Mike

5 comments:

Jake said...

I think the antlers look too big to be from a roe deer. Roe deer's antlers are only about 30cm long. The first two deer looked like reds, and the other two I think are sika deer.I'm not sure about the sika deer, though, because they don't have them where I live so I've only seen them in pictures.

If a gamekeeper sees a deer with only one antler, he will shoot it to stop it hurting other deer when they fight.

Jake
jakes-bones.blogspot.com

Mike Pepler said...

I don't think we have Red or Sika down this way, which is why I;m left with assuming they are Roe. The antlers don't look right for Fallow.

Mike

Jake said...

But the first two deer in the video have long tails, though, much longer than roe deer normally have. And the antlers are bigger than the head. I've not seen that before on roe deer.

Mike Pepler said...

Hmmm. Maybe you're right. I just looked it up and apparently there are feral red deer in Sussex, though Sika are rarer. Someone else thought they were fallow, so I'm getting many different opinions...

Mike

Jake said...

Maybe they all could be fallow. That would explain why the two different colours of deer are together in a herd.