Arne: Sika does in conference

A beautiful but chilly morning. The RSPB (Royal Society for the Protection of Birds) site at Arne in the Isle of Purbeck is an idyllic place for a walk in such weather. Every few steps provide a new vista. It is a mixture of shoreline (to Poole Harbour), mud flats, woodland and heath. My favourite place to visit in Purbeck.

Arne hosts sika deer, cervus nippon, which I have photographed many times before. This morning I had already encountered on two separate occasions a sika stag grazing on the path in front of me. The rutting season is now virtually ended, but it is still prudent to exercise caution in case a stag acts aggressively. Each of the two stags looked (or glared?) at me for a few seconds, then turned their back and slowly moved away.

Then I came across this group of does grazing ahead of me. I walked slowly forwards, stopping about twenty yards short of them. In hopes of attracting their curiosity I squatted down, camera in hand, to present a smaller - and less worrying - profile to my audience. Their interest in me increased, and the group acted as I had hoped, advancing a few yards in my direction.

It was at this point that they held a conference about what to do. The closest doe was clearly the leader of the group and the most courageous, the others were a little bit anxious, their degree of nervousness indicated by their distance behind the leader. One of the does positioned herself directly behind the two in front so that she could not see me, nor I her. The conference seems to have calmed the doubters somewhat, but at that point their attention was drawn to the loud voices of a group of approaching specimens of homo sapiens. And very soon, away the sikas trotted.

(Sika is the Japanese word for deer.)