Sons and mothers

The roe deer seem pretty relaxed at this time of year.  I wonder whether it's because they can see farther through the woods in winter, or because last summer's young are nearly full grown, or perhaps because the leaf litter means they can hear people coming from some way off.  Whatever the reason they just watch as you approach and at times they can't be bothered to get up.

All the does I have seen recently have had just one kid with them and they all seem to have been young males.  Males and females have different patterns to the white on their rumps.  In the female it is triangular (often described as an upside-down heart shape) with a white tuft (not a tail) and in the male it is kidney-shaped.  This is a doe

and this is a young male.

Another doe

and another male kid.

Here are mother and son.

There is a lot of evidence of the deer in the woods as well.  For some reason they don't like to lie on leaves so they make scrapes in the leaf litter.

Here you can see a print in the scrape.

Roe does usually have two kids in June, one male and one female.  I don't know if male youngsters stay with their mothers longer than the females but I haven't seen does with female kids in the past few weeks.

We are spending a lot of time, effort and money protecting our newly-planted trees in the reserve (you can see the tree guards in the background in the photo above) but the deer are pleasure to watch so we don't begrudge it.