As you’ll know the last few weeks have been a wee bit frustrating photographically as there has been so much office work to do. Things are about to turn full circle now with lots of projects, workshops and trips over the coming weeks and I allowed myself a day joining my Natures Images colleague danny Green as he ran one of his many workshops in Bradgate Park earlier this week to photograph the deer.
Now Danny spends most of October there and has done for many years now and these images are just the output of one day that was at best so so in terms of light and conditions generally but they do just go to prove that if you don’t get out you won’t get any images and if you do well there’s always something to come back with.
Bradgate houses a reasonable number of Fallow Deer and like many park deer they are reasonably tame as you can see.
At this time of the year the Bucks are spending much of their time looking after their females and constantly assessing when they are coming into season.
As impressive as his antlers are though when compared with the main deer species that people come here to photograph the Red Deer he really is somewhat dwarfed.
He too was spending his time rounding up his females and generally chasing off any other stags that came within about 400m radius of his harem.
Between bellows (and while the hinds were resting to digest their food) he too would take a break and gave us the chance to really appreciate his impressive, and very dark, pair of antlers.
My abiding memories of him though will be his almost constant bellowings which a couple of local teenagers walking in the park who came to ask me what was going on, described as sounding like “someone giving a painful birth”! Not quite what he had in mind as a warning call I suspect.
No prize winning images here I’m sure but a thoroughly enjoyable day nonetheless, good to catch up with and meet Jason, Sarah, Jill and Andrew who were with Danny for the day (along with Ed, Rene and Peter finishing off their Dutch excursions) and a reminder (if ever I needed it) that the saying on my office wall is oh so true – You Can’t Take Any Pictures If You’re Sat Here! Bring on the coming weeks.
The bellowing photos are awesome