Roe deer with bright reddish summer coat Roe deer browse amongst the hawthorn scrub and in the shadows beneath sunlit yew trees. The warm reddish-brown of their summer coats and their large ears are striking. They/ve seen us but they linger under the trees. A peaceful scene until something startles them. Their barking would have been puzzling if we'd heard it unawares.
Roe deer are native the Britain. Their winter coats are grey-brown with the caudal rump patch more visible. A cream tuft ( a tush) shows in the female's white caudal patch. Roe deer enlarge the white caudal patch as a danger signal, when alarmed. In March 2010 I took a photograph of a pair of roe deer, alarmed to find themselves between a group of people approaching to their right and myself to the left. So their caudal patches show well.
The rut takes place from mid-July to mid-August. With delayed implantation the does give birth to their kid in May. The doe in my images looks heavy-bellied. In watching wild creatures there is much that is hidden from us
The rut takes place from mid-July to mid-August. With delayed implantation the does give birth to their kid in May. The doe in my images looks heavy-bellied. In watching wild creatures there is much that is hidden from us
This is the season of yellow flowers, of hawk's-beard and hawkweed. Mouse-eared hawkweed has lovely lemon flowers and mouse-soft leaves.
A brood of wall brown butterflies is on the wing, with small heath, dingy skipper and brimstone. From somewhere down in the Lyth Valley comes the distant call of a cuckoo.
We hear and glimpse linnet. Redpoll are vocal and we locate one in the top of a conifer, in silhouette. Willow warbler are everywhere and we hear a green woodpecker.
The gorse looks sick,. Where there's any green in its foliage there are flowers, setting-seed. But the brown and dead foliage bears no flowers. Gorse is an important habitat on the scrub, for linnet and redpoll and I wonder if it will survive whatever afflicts it.
A brood of wall brown butterflies is on the wing, with small heath, dingy skipper and brimstone. From somewhere down in the Lyth Valley comes the distant call of a cuckoo.
We hear and glimpse linnet. Redpoll are vocal and we locate one in the top of a conifer, in silhouette. Willow warbler are everywhere and we hear a green woodpecker.
The gorse looks sick,. Where there's any green in its foliage there are flowers, setting-seed. But the brown and dead foliage bears no flowers. Gorse is an important habitat on the scrub, for linnet and redpoll and I wonder if it will survive whatever afflicts it.
Hearing a redstart, we sit close to the escarpment cliff to listen and we find the male. The female flies low and swift to their nest by a dead tree below the cliff top, bringing insects to feed their brood. How different the redstart behaviour once they have eggs and young. The male no longer advertises his presence in loud song, from a display perch. He has a mate, now the focus is on discretion and reading their young. They do not linger, but fly swiftly into the dead tree and out again to find more food. The female lacks the bold colours of her mate, although her tail is flame-red. The secrets of the hanging wood: so close to the popular route along the cliff-edge but the sheer drop shelters the redstart family. They're not easy to see but this is the spot where I spent hours studying and photographing the male early in May 2020 and I'd worked out his territory. This must be the same bird or the same lineage and they return to a spot which worked well for them last spring.
Scout Scar escarpment is at its most lovely in early June. The cliff-face is yellow with hoary rockrose and all along the cliff-top there is common rockrose, bird's-foot trefoil and horseshoe vetch. There's a clump of mountain everlasting too. There's an intermittent light wind which keeps the flowers of hoary rockrose closed but the more robust common rockrose opens its flowers to the sun. See how hoary rockrose looked when fully open on a warm and still day ( blog Hoary Rockrose 30th May 2021.).
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