Awaiting The Return of Resident Roe Deer

It was a few years ago that we started to see the deer regularly on my night camera, as described in an earlier blog. We were overjoyed to see a doe with her babies under our apple tree in the dawn light. For the last two summers we have been lucky enough to see the doe with her newborns and watched as they learned to walk and their coats gradually changed from spotted white to match the colour of their mother.

They have also given us some anxious moments as we have worried about the little ones being left on their own when there are so many predators. We saw a dog chasing the fawns last year and then the mother raced over the hill to the rescue and drew the dog away. Unfortunately only one of the two fawns survived, we think one must have died of shock as we didn’t see the dog actually catch them. I have never screamed so loud in my life but it was too far away for us to be able to intervene. There were a lot of tears I have to tell you! The year before our doe had two fawns that survived, a boy and a girl.

In the last few weeks, we have heard deer barking so we are hopeful the doe survived the hunting season and will be back on her territory. Time to put out the night cameras again methinks!

Update: 10 days after posting this blog we saw the Doe and her ‘baby’ who now looks very grown up!