Thursday, July 3, 2008

Bambi

The neighborhood we live in has a large population of white-tailed deer. We live adjacent to the Barton Creek Greenbelt, so there is plenty of greenery here and habitat for the deer.

Wiki says Texas is home to the most white-tailed deer of any other U.S. state or Canadian province, with an estimated population of over four million.

Around May every year, the females give birth, and the fawns have a reddish brown coat with white spots, not unlike Bambi. As they grow, the spots disappear. We have a closed backyard with a small gap in the fence, so each year at least one female chooses our backyard as a safe place to leave her fawn while she forages.

Shadow found this fawn last year hidden in the grass and was totally fascinated. I was afraid the cats would attack the little fawn, but they were content to just lie in the grass with it and watch it!

After this one, we had a set of twins in the yard, which liked to nibble on the pumpkin vines that grew there.


This has been one of the things that I love most about Austin and the area we live in. Going close to the fawn and photographing it the way I did is probably not good because it scares the helpless little fawn. I didn't realize it then, but this year we didn't take any pictures though we did again have fawns in the backyard.

5 comments:

Shreyas said...

now Those things have feelings..
chithappa stop ignoring my birthday questions!
they have feelings too you know, you cant just neglect them!
*pokes tongue out*

Raghav Mahalingam said...

Sorry shreyu,

Didn't mean to hurt your questions' feelings. :')

We'll call you this weekend and I'll give you all the sordid details of my birthday.

You still didn't answer my question: You've said deer have feelings but spiders don't. How about rats?

Deepa said...

We're trying to figure out if we could DRIVE to Seattle, and part of the motivation is to stop along the way at several places such as Yellowstone. Let us know if you have thoughts about that! Meanwhile, who is shreyas? Interesting dialog there :).

Shreyas said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
u_naik said...

Oh! they are sooooo very cute. You are indeed lucky to see fawns right in your own backyard.
Hmmm twins twice, is it a harbinger of things to come at your house...
Nicely written article