A Day with Deer
Another weekend, another sunrise start. They never get easier, especially with the lengthening days.
With great effort, I succeeded in dragging my body out of bed. After a cup of tea, I was ready to go and so I set off for a small meadow on the edge of West Sedgemoor. Upon grabbing my camera bag I debated leaving the 500mm lens in the boot of the car; it’s rather heavy, and would I actually use it? - As you can probably tell, I was glad I brought it along.
There was an unseasonably heavy frost on the ground and after reaching the meadow it was clear that finding the roosting macro subjects I was planning to photograph was going to be a challenge.
A female Blackcap caught my attention, so I grabbed the 500mm lens out of my bag, attached it to the R5 and set off in the direction she flew. As I walked out of one side of the meadow into the neighbouring field, I was blinded by the rising Sun; at which point a Roe Deer jumps across in front of me then stops about 15 meters away. - We are now both staring right at each other, frozen and unsure as to what to do.
I slowly lift my camera and fire off a few shots, the Roe doesn’t move. I crouch down to get a more stable footing, as I do it takes a few steps towards me. Over the next couple of minutes, he edges closer and leaves me wishing I had a wide-angle lens on! I manage to remove the teleconverter from the 500mm which helps and even after all the messing around he’s still standing just 10 meters from me. During a long 3 minutes (I checked the metadata to be sure), I had taken plenty of images and so lowered the camera. At this point, he starts strolling away, and on picking the camera back up he bolts. I take a few more pictures as he goes, then head back into the meadow.
A few minutes later I accidentally flush another Roe that I hadn’t seen sitting on the edge of the woods, this one didn’t want to pose and bolted into the darkness of the trees.
Roe Deer Buck trying to work out if I’m friend or foe.
The second Roe Deer heading for the woods.
I didn’t spend much longer at the meadow due to having a meeting to make mid-morning. Before I left I photographed the Cowslips and Green-Winged Orchids that were covered in a layer of ice; this was a little strange as most of the frosts are usually over by mid-April.
The meeting with David German was a great opportunity to catch up on the projects taking place in the village I once lived. I’ll write a separate post on these as they deserve their own! Once I had parted with David it was over to the parents for a socially distanced garden lunch, unfortunately, I didn’t have long as there was still more to do.
My final stop was to meet up with Steve and Graham at Thurlbear Woods and Quarrylands, this time for Grizzled Skippers and any other macro subjects that showed up. We had a good few hours with lots of Nomad bees, Grizzled and Dingy skippers, beetles, and various flies. After parting ways it was then time to head home and go through the pictures from the day.
A rather successful 12 hour day with another long day planned for tomorrow. Dartmoor is calling….
