Deer At Drumlin

 I started my evening at Drumlin with one of each lens type, one macro, one wide angle, and my 150-600mm telephoto lens. It was a little cumbersome, but I knew I would regret not having all three if there was an unexpected opportunity. I kept my telephoto on my camera, my wide angle in my pocket (being the lightest of the three, and help my macro with my free hand. It was sunny and warm, but dark clouds were creeping in, threatening to ruin the golden hour shots I was hoping for. 

As I entered the crop fields, I followed the edge of the mowed grass, passing the hoop-house, and scanning the edge of the meadow for anything worth stopping for. Suddenly, something violently bursted through the grass, never reveling its identity. My gut tells me that it was a deer fawn, bedded down in the waist-high grass for the day. It was too powerful and displaced the grass too much to be a rabbit. I tried to find it, trampling a few yards towards where it sounded like it stopped moving. I never found it, but I did find several fawn-sized bare patches in the meadow, compressed by it's daytime bedding. On my way out of the tall grass, I spotted a white lipped snail on some common milkweed, a job for my macro lens...

I gathered my 3 lenses and hiked up the drumlin to explore the better lit side of the hill. By now, shade from the hill had mostly covered the crop feild below. I failed to change back to my telephoto in time to capture a brief hummingbird encounter at the hill's summit. I approached a bench that overlooked everything west of the farm, but suddenly froze in place, and silently dropped to the ground. It was a good thing the hummingbird had teased me just minutes earlier, because now I was prepared. about 50 feet away stood a buck with velvet-covered antlers. He was fully alert, and I knew I was on thin ice. I took a few shots over the course of a minute, and then he trotted into the nearby woods. Surprising, he didnt flag his white tail, or break into a gallop. He was spooked by me, but not enough to waste precious energy.

While looking back at my photos right after the buck left, I noticed that his right antler had snapped off, and was now hanging from a strand of velvet: the coating of fuzzy skin that delivers blood to the antlers while they are developing. It is shed at the beginning of the fall. In late June, bucks would not have started sparring yet, which eliminates an obvious explanation. I think it happened during a collision with either a vehicle or one with a tree while running. The internet says it can be caused by poor nutrition, but I doubt this because the farm provides plenty of places to feed. 

As I returned to the growing feild, I felt the sting of a deer fly gnawing into me, which i decided to photograph before swatting.

I then spotted three does, two of which were in our chive feild but fed on weeds. They fled as I approached.

I then caught a glimpse of orange. The broken-antlered buck had apparently followed me down the hill, and was now grazing on winter rye. He retreated with much more haste than in our first encounter, disappearing into "rock island" (an island of trees in our feild where we pile bags of rocks)

It began to gently rain as an amazing storm cloud filled the sky. I had already strained my cameras settings to take the photo above, and lighting was getting even worse, so I called it a night. My walk back to my truck was filled with the sounds of chirping barn swallows and crickets as well as distant barred owl calls.