The Monarch of West Penwith

Its not every day that you encounter one of the greats of  the  UK's wild animals down here in West Cornwall, but this morning I found myself looking up at the antlers of a seven to eight foot Red Deer Stag just on the opposite side of a Cornish wall about eight metres from me and was I impressed,  You bet I was!  For this first shot I had to hurriedly remove my 1.4 converter from my 500mm lens and back off around 20 metres to achieve the composition for the image posted below.

This fine animal showed no fear or any sign of moving away so I gradually moved in closer taking the next four images as I did so.

But there was more to come ; as another younger stag entered onto the scene to provide me with the portrait in the next image below.

The two stags moved in close together and eventually started to rut with each other providing me with some fine interaction images.

This was followed by the larger older male thrashing his antlers about in some vegetation before they both sat down in the field looking very relaxed,

These two fine stags were still sat there watching me as I retreated from their territory and I happened to look back up to the field opening that I had just left only to see a lovely pair of young Roe Deer stood there silhouetted against the skyline,   What a wonderful Morning !!!

My appreciation and thanks to John St Ledger for telling me of his Red Deer sighting yesterday.