Three in a roe...

Oh deer, another pun...(Enough!)

According to the British Deer Society's site, roe form small groups in winter. This trio were out mid morning, alongside the River Avon (the light strip at the top of pic) about 3 miles from Salisbury centre. I'd already photographed another, different trio with the cathedral as a backdrop, but they were much further away and though the cathedral was a couple of miles away, the extreme foreshortening of the 750mm (equivalent) fixed lens, I only got half of that in. You only see the outlines of the animal's backs as they were grazing in long grass. It was a serious toss-up between one of those and one of this lot.

This image is almost uncropped and I had shots of them all grazing, which might be more authentic but part of their visual appeal are their big ears and doey eyes and faces. They had checked me out a few times before I took this, just checking that I hadn't come closer and they often looked up at other, noisier people.

The lens, again, is my old Tamron 500mm mirror lens, on the DX cropping D7000, the high iso capabilities allowing me leeway to counteract camera shake, that would have been hitherto impossible in the days of film, when this type of lens was popular, allowing me to handhold. I only found I could use this lens on the D7000 after removing the protector filter (a big 82mm) as it seemed to have been taking the edge off sharpness just too much. I have sharpened this image a little in editing.

After my successful Blip of yesterday, with all the flooding and all that, well, perhaps I was affected more than I thought as I couldn't upload this image, nor check Blip, or use the internet, or email, at least properly, for nearly 24 hours. Some say the optic fibres had got a soaking....In the end, I still had to reduce the 17mb of the original to about half before it finally went up - the whole affair far more difficult and fractious than photographing deer in the dull cold - never thought I'd say that!