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We get deer in the garden just about every day (mostly why it took Mrs Image the best part of 20 years to get it all to grow!😶) .... this cutie was nose up to the window as she'd decided the patio was the best place for extra tasty nibbles .... if you go out to them they move off all of 10 metres ... they're not daft and know they're safe here 😀



K

She'd brought her little ones as well




K

What a wonderful place you have. Thanks for posting.
Bob.

Excellent photos. We used to get the odd cameleon, baboon or jackal in our garden in Nairobi .

Can't match the baboons (though we do have some badly-behaved friends visit every now and then who might qualify! 🙂) ... plenty of badgers, foxes and hares though .... particularly pleased with having a group of four hares living in the paddock behind the house with the horses ... lovely to see them thriving ... fortunately we don't have rabbits (rabbits and their digging don't mix with horses!) ... the buzzards have seen them all off.

Got any pics of the baboons?

K

Quite small for deer. We suffer from a burgeoning population of Muntjac's, closer to dog size. They eat the heads of best flowers in your garden although strangely not daffodils, and are becoming increasingly daring. Regularly see them in woods and crossing roads during daily dog walk. Completely silent in movement.

These are Roe Deer probably about 2ft 6in at the shoulder.. that's a doe (tbough the buck's aren't much bigger) ... we also get Red Deer in the garden every now and then ... they're donkey-sized.

No Muntjaks round here but I believe there are some further south.

K

As per Image, they are Roe deer. A Doe and what looks like this years offspring.. The Roe Rut is on here in Somerset, so the Bucks will be around the Does for a week or so soon. Normally Roe deer stay in a fairly local area and can be in groups of around 3-5. Depending on the time of year the group can include male and female..
With regard to your garden, Roe are known as selective browsers, so they go from plant to plant and nibble out the delicate centre parts.. normally in fields this is over a bigger area, so they do fairly low level damage, although they do like standing mature Wheat to eat...
If a Roe Buck is living in your area they can mark their territory by brashing small shrubs and trees with their antlers before and during the Rut, this results in the bark and lower branches being partly stripped. If you come across a 4 to 5 meter ring around ta small shrub or lone small tree, this is known as Roe ring and this occurs during the Rut by the Buck chasing the Doe around and around until she agrees to mate..

You do live in a super spot K.

Mrs F is very envious - especially when I told her you don't have to worry about rabbits in the horse's paddocks.

Davetherave ... correct on all counts ... we've wearhered the depradations of the deer for 30 years and the garden (aka jungle) has got ahead of them to the point it can take a bit of browsing without harm ... we have woods just out of the picture that we've managed with 'benign neglect' to support the local wildlife so if Mrs Image wants to protect anything in particular the deer only have to shove off 20 yards and they're free to eat what they want ... the garden is definitely of the self-mainaining variety as it's far too big to micro-manage ... so it has little in the way of 'polite' flowers to protect ... our one big worry is that we are having to replant about 20 acres after Storm Arwen and with our planned replanting being native trees the bucks ragging the saplings with their horns will be a real problem ... we strenuously avoid getting the shooters in (our neighbour's preferred solution) so looks like upping the cost and fitting decent tree-protectors is the way we'll go.

Paul ... yep.. I wander out every morning with my cuppa and appreciate what a great place it is to live 🙂


K