Deer rutting season

This morning I met up with friends Gill and Trevor Keville in Richmond Park. The deer rutting season has commenced and we hoped to photograph some rutting stags. 

We started the day with breakfast in Pembroke Lodge and then headed across the park in search of the deer. We were pleased to see quite a few Red and Fallow deer. One Red stag was sitting alone in the grass and wasn't bothered by us snapping away. He made for a very good model!

As we walked across the other side of the park we saw another lone stag lying in the grass. He looked very forlorn and appeared to have a battle wound to his shoulder.  In the distance we saw two Red stags, each with their own harem of hinds.  One had a considerably bigger harem of around twenty females, whilst the other only about six.  

We stood and watched for quite some time hoping that we might witness a rut. It was quite comical to watch - the stag with the least amount of hinds roared and approached the other stag numerous times but each time made a hasty retreat as the dominant stag chased him back. Our patience paid off though when a rut occurred - the two stags locking antlers in their mating battle. The stags efforts paid off - when they parted he managed to usher one of the hinds over to his group.  Further attempts were made but to no avail. We noticed that the injured stag who had been lying in the grass had crept round the back of the large group and, whilst the other two were sparring, stole two hinds from the herd and made a hasty retreat with them.  He seemed quite happy with his harem of two! My blip had to be of the two rutting Red stags! 

It was a lovely sunny day and by mid afternoon, the day turned surprisingly warm for October and off came my jacket and soon after my fleece!

We decided to walk into Richmond and along the Thames, stopping first at the Gourmet Burger Kitchen where I had a very good satay chicken burger and a salted caramel milkshake :)  Walking back to the car it started to rain a little and by the time we got back to the cars and were driving home the heavens opened - we were extremely lucky that it held off for us during the day! 

A really enjoyable day and loads of fun as always.  

An album from the day can be seen on ipernity ...