Whitetail deer in the suburbs

[Tom Barry]

Mom and fawn came over for a visit this morning. The 70D+EF 70-300 f/4-5.6USM II:
IMG_4342_jpg by tombarry975, on Flickr
IMG_4337_jpg by tombarry975, on Flickr

[pschlute]

Very cute

[Tom Barry]

Thanks, Peter. It is a great joy to share our space with them.

[Tronhard]

lovely images of beautiful animals. We used to get them coming right through Victoria in BC, grazing their way through the suburbs on people's manicured gardens - that made them less than popular. We used to get cougars hunting them and ending up in suburbia, confused and scared - and scaring the locals until the conservation officers tranquilized them and took them back to the wild.

[Tom Barry]

Thanks, Trev. I know we have cougars in this area - I've seen the tracks - but I've never seen one. They are very shy.

[Tronhard]

Thanks, Trev. I know we have cougars in this area - I've seen the tracks - but I've never seen one. They are very shy.

This one appeared in my neighbourhood, very close to a school. As you can see it was quite big and very frightened. I was glad the conservation officers tranquilized it rather than the police shooting it - they were carrying assault rifles which worried me more than the cat actually. Those things can shoot through walls very easily.



Credit Victoria Times Colonist

[Shadowman]

Always nice to see, nicely captured.

[Tom Barry]

Thanks, John. Trev, that is one big cougar. Wildlife experts say there are more of them, even near urban areas, than we realize, because of their stealthy nature. I was an outdoorsman all of my active life and I have only ever seen one cougar in the wild, and that was just a glimpse. My dog and I were at a stock tank (a pond), taking a break from a morning of late-season quail hunting. We were sitting on the top of the bank, when the dog alerted to something in the tawny winter grass just above water level on the opposite side. I followed her intent gaze, but noticed nothing until suddenly my vision resolved the puzzle and I found the cougar's face. The rest of it was hidden by the same-color grass. A moment later, it was gone.

[LePetomane]

We had a cougar in our neighborhood a while ago. I'm surprised we don't have more critters as our property backs up to a forest. Fortunately the wolves stay near Yellowstone or the ranchers take care of them. One or the other, probably both.

[DanK]

They may be cute, but they are not harmless. Their population numbers are way out of whack because of the shortage of predators, and that is causing serious damage of several sorts, and not just destruction of plants in suburban lawns. For example, there are areas in the east and midwest where forests have been substantially damaged by overgrazing by deer. In addition, they carry serious diseases. The most worrisome may be chronic wasting diseases (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronic_wasting_disease). In some parts of the US, there has been a large enough increase in CWDs in deer that hunters have been warned not to eat any they kill unless they are first examined for infection. CWDs are very nasty illnesses; you may recall that wasting diseases in domesticated livestock that resembled the fatal Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease were a big issue in several areas a few years ago.

As is so often the case, there is a price to be paid when human activity upsets a long-standing ecological balance. In recent years, there has been increasing attention paid to the cascading effects of removing or reducing a keystone species, which is often a predator. In this case, we have turned a cute and--under other circumstances relatively harmless--herbivore into an environmental and health threat.

[Tom Barry]

Dan, what you say is unfortunately true in many areas, including some places in our area of Central Texas. Fortunately, the suburban deer in our neighborhood are kept down to reasonable numbers by the coyotes (and, I think, cougars sometimes). The fawn in my post had a twin a week or two ago, but I haven't seen it recently, and I expect it was culled by coyotes. Around here, people have learned not to let their cats and small dogs out unless they have good fencing. Of course, that doesn't stop the great horned owls from snatching kittens and teacup-sized dogs from time to time.

[Tom Barry]

Good news: I was wrong about the second fawn gone missing. The two were with their mother this morning. I used the Lumix FZ1000 superzoom because that's what I had out when they came calling:
P1690437 by tombarry975, on Flickr

[Wavelength]

Excellent and lovely images

[Tom Barry]

Thanks much, Nandakumar.