Roe Deer on the Moor

Disappointing cloud cover wiped out a lovely sunrise as I arrived on a local Cornish moor this morning but within an hour I had worked on five doe and three young bucks in low light levels several of which are posted here.

Watching me watching Them !

Early am I was watching and snapping away at a group of back lit female Roe Deer taking cover in a known shadowed coppice retreat that I never enter when I became the one being observed.

As I looked around the fine young buck below was stood proud in the reed beds intently watching my static behaviour from around twenty metres.

I slowly swung my gimble mounted camera and lens around and managed to quietly take a couple of portrait shots before the buck picked up on the trio of females in the coppice and immediately skipped off to join them.

Roe Deer Sightings

This evening I spent some time watching this young buck head down and feeding,  It seemed like forever before it raised it head to check its surroundings and I took my first few images.

I thought this young Buck was on his own but as I watched three other deer appeared from the long grasses to join it.

Four Deer eventually became five and they all grouped together concerned about a distant dog walker that they could see moving on the other side of the moor

I waited and watched as the deer all faded into the Reed beds and moved away undetected  !!

Early morning Roe Deer

As I headed for the south coast this morning I called in at Longrock and was pleased to see a doe Roe Deer out feeding in the fields,  With their numbers on the down recently it was also nice to see that this one showed signs of early pregnancy to help boost their local population,

I watched this doe for a while as she foraged both the field and the hedgerow browse line looking quite relaxed but alert and when I left she still had her head down munching the lush grasses,  Light levels were poor before sun up for photography but just seeing these fine animals always makes......
                                           An Excellent start to my Day !!

Marazion Marsh today: Part two

My visit to Marazion marsh started before sunrise this morning looking for sightings of Roe Deer,  Numbers have been on the decline over the last year and on this occasion only one was sighted  but I was at least pleased to see that this doe looked to be showing early signs of pregnancy to hopefully  help boost the numbers again this year.

The sunrise over Marazion was serene and peaceful and coincided with high tide

The early rays of sunshine are a gift to any photographer that works this marsh with the reed beds and wildlife and camera settings all responding well to such mornings and after being treated to an early bittern in flight posted in the previous blog I decided to concentrate on some of the other bigger birds that this Marsh supports,

Longrock Roe deer

It was a dark and dismay morning when I set off for Longrock on the lookout for a pair of Roe deer that had not been showing for the last week so on arrival I was pleased to see them munching away on the lush grass,  They now have fine grey winter coats which tends to make them stand out against the grass but look at the difference in the forth image where the Doe is backed by the matching tree line where they spend the bulk of their time and you would be hard pushed to see them until they move,  This pair of Doe are twins and I first met them on their birth day back on the 19th June 2016 at 4.50 AM when their mother gave birth in this same field very close to the road hedgerow, [ See the bottom image below }  I have not seen their mother around since May of this year when she looked very pregnant again but she seemed to just disappear before giving birth, Hence the reason that I am always pleased to see this pair that are always together after they have been missing for a while.

Sunrise over Marazion marsh

We had our first keen frost of the winter this morning,  A dawn sky and sunrise to die for and a mixed bag of regular wildlife which started with a Roe Deer near the rail tracks cutting through the marsh,  The rabbits were slow to get moving and spent time shaking the frost from the grass off their cold paws as they went. A pair of colourful mallard flew in caught by the rays of the rising sun which also tinted the water splash as they landed at the front of the marsh and finally a Cormorant hauled out or the water looking full from early morning fishing to dry its wings in the early warmth of the sun.  No illusive Bittern or Sparrowhawk,  both of which had been well photographed here earlier in the week by young Ben Oates but if the weather stays fine I might pop back down during late afternoon until sunset,  The marsh is a cracking location for photography when the sun shines !!

Stithians southern cut off today

It was a fine morning here in Cornwall and My day started early with a dozen or so Roe Deer images taken before sunrise using the Nikon D5's Auto ISO set to a maximum of 51,000, The light levels were as such that  I could not see these deer without looking through the viewfinder but the cameras AF system focused and tracked them and exposed the image at maximum aperture of F4 and 1/200th of a second,  It sees things a lot better than I can!!

I went home for breakfast and then straight on to Stithians southern cut-off where I played around with various new AF settings and a 1.7 converter that extended the focal length of my lens to 850mm I worked on many of the local birds that are regularly attracted to the feeders and the images below represent a fair portion of them,  No exotic Sparrowhawks or Otters today But with a good forecast I will be back to try my luck again tomorrow,  Its a tough life But some ones got to do it.!!

Ruined Roe Deer shoot

Not for the first time I experienced a ruined Roe deer shoot again this morning,  Our local Roe deer territory is triangular in shape and covers about sixty acres of fields and marshy woodland, it has quite busy roads on all its boundaries and over the last couple of days some of the field hedgerows have been cut back which is standard practise in general to areas adjoining local roads,  I arrived before dawn to set up  a low level tripod and camo cover close to the field gates and waited for the deer to show as the light levels slowly picked up,  Two Does arrived at 6.54am and to accommodate  my 500mm lens and 1.4 converter added to improve the subject size per frame over the working distance my settings started at  Auto ISO set to a max of ISO 10000,  Minimum aperture of F 5.6 on aperture priority and a challenging shutter speed of 1/13th sec,  The two deer gradually moved across the field in my direction and I took single shot images each time they stopped to feed,  I carried on in this manner until 7.09am when shutter speeds had improved to 1/50th sec and things were looking good for faster speeds as the light levels improved,

                 
   And this is when all my plans went wrong,  A delivery van driver had spotted the two deer over the lowered hedgerow as he drove by,  He turned off of the road at high speed into my field entrance with headlights on and his radio blaring,  He then saw me stand up at the corner of the gate and stated how nice it was to see the deer which were by now on the gallop at the far side of the field,  I stated that it had been just fine seeing the deer when they were relaxed and feeding but  Not so him and his untimely arrival !!  But I will be back another day just like many others that have gone before until I get the close focus high shutter speed images that I want rather than the slow 1/50th sec blurred action image posted below that was the finish of todays exercise.

 

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.