Baby, baby!

I've been away, gallivanting with family, but I couldn't hold this for later.

Doe and newborn fawns. One of our regular young visitors, with her own family now.

More later, in a day or two. Off in the morning for another adventure.

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He estado paseando con la familia, sin poder subir nada aquí, pero no pude guardarme esto:

Foto: una vendadita con sus dos cervatillos recién nacidos. La madre es una de los venados que me visitan casi a diario.

Subo más fotos en unos pocos dias.

Spotty

So tame, the deer are. They know they can trust us, on these quiet streets away from the highway. And we do keep such good eating in our gardens!

Fawn, checking me out from the side of the road. They lose their spots at 3 to 4 months old.

And here's the mother.

These are the Columbian Black-tailed Deer, Odocoileus hemionus ssp. columbianus. They are plentiful up and down the Pacific coast from southern BC to California. Fawns are born in May or June; this fawn, in mid-August, would be about ready to lose his spots and grow his winter coat.

Synchronized grooming.

I'll remember you, he says.

Later on, the fawn came alone to my garden and ate a whole row of beet tops, topping them off with bites from the last of the Transparent apples. Gourmet dining!

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Los venados que andan por aquí nos tienen mucha confianza. Saben bien que no les haremos daño, y que manejamos con cuidado, aquí lejos del tráfico en las carreteras. ¡Y cultivamos tan ricas verduras y frutas en nuestros jardines!

1. Un venadito me observa desde el borde de la calle. Pierden sus manchas cuando tienen 3 o 4 meses de edad. Los cervatillos nacen en mayo o junio, este, visto a mediados de agosto, estará casi listo para perder las manchas y vestirse de su abrigo de invierno.
2. La madre. Estos son los venados Cola-Negra Columbianos, Odocoileus hemionus ssp. columbianus. Son muy frecuentes a lo largo de la costa del Pacífico, desde el sur de esta isla hasta California.
3. Sincronización.
4. Fijándome en la memoria.

Más tarde, este venadito vino a solas a mi jardín y se comio toda una hilera de las hojas de betabel (remolacha), con mordidas de las manzanas Transparente como postre. ¡Gastronomía gourmet!

Deer at the window again

 About those deer at my window:

They showed up last July; two fawns and their mother. The fawns were still spotty, probably around 3 or 4 months old. I haven't seen them since, but I know they've been coming by, because they keep eating my nasturtium leaves, leaving the stems standing bare.

I happened to be near the window when the youngsters came by a couple of days ago. They've grown, but are still shorter than the mother was.

Watching me and my camera. The white spots are rain on my window.

Eating stonecrop that is spreading through the grass under the window.

(Yes, I know the grass needs mowing: it will stay that way until spring. With a load of snow on top, the extra grass will provide cover for ground-level beasties.)

The second deer, a male, crossed the road to check a yardful of flowers in pots. He's developed a nice set of antlers. He may be the brother to the one at my window, or, judging by the antlers, a companion, a full yearling.

Turning back to look at me, outside now.

Anybody home?

One more shot: caught just as the deer turned to leave, hiding most of the body behind my house plants on the windowsill. I kept the photo because it showed the hairs so well; my new lens is doing a good job. But then I noticed how thick that fur is. She will be well protected from the winter chill.

Fur coat on the tail end.

And they nipped off the leaves on my nasturtiums again.

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Acerca de esos venados:

Me visitaron por primera vez en el mes de julio pasado, dos venaditos y su madre. Los chicos todavía llevaban sus manchas blancas; tendrían unos 3 o 4 meses de edad. Desde entonces no los he visto, pero sé que han vuelto, ya que siguen comiendo las hojas de mis capuchinas, dejando los tallos intactos.

Estuve cerca de la ventana cuando llegaron los dos jóvenes hace un par de dias. Ya crecieron, pero no alcanzan al tamaño de su mamá todavía.

1. Muy cerca, mirándome y a mi cámara. Las manchas blancas son gotas de lluvia en el vidrio de la ventana.
2. Está comiendo mis plantas suculentas Sedum sp. que se están mezclando con el césped bajo la ventana. (Y sí, sé que al césped le falta un buen corte, pero así se queda hasta la primavera. Bajo la capa de nieve, formará un refugio calientito para los animalitos que viven al nivel del suelo.)
3. El segundo venado, un macho, cruzó la calle para comerse unas de las flores en macetas allí. Salí a verle sin el vidrio en medio. Ya ha desarrollado una buena cornamenta. Puede ser el hermano de la primera, o tal vez un acompañante, ya pasado un año de edad, juzgando por el tamaño de los cuernos.
4. ¿Hay alguien en casa?
5. Otra foto final: ésta la saqué mientras la venadita daba la vuelta para irse, y quedó escondida tras mis plantas caseras, aparte de la cola. Guardé la foto porque mostraba tan bien los pelos individuales; la lente nueva hace buenas fotos. Pero luego miré otra vez y noté lo eficaz que será ese abrigo cuando soplan los vientos helados este invierno.

Y otra vez, se han comido las hojas de las capuchinas.

Watch the ears

I was bent down, looking at mushrooms on a log, when something made me look up. Not a sound, not movement; something, some nameless awareness of company. And there was a deer, just standing there a few metres away, watching me.

I'm the intruder here.

She stood there. I straightened up. She didn't move at first, then turned her head to get a better look at me. Listened. The only sound was the chatter of the river below us.

Watch her ears.

One ear for me, one for the trail.

We stood there for a long moment. She turned one ear away from me, then after a minute, picked her way gently, slowly among the logs and across the trail, stopping every few steps to look at me again. Then suddenly, she leapt and disappeared among the bushes on the river bank.

I heard nothing, not even her steps. But no sooner had she gone, than a woman came around the bend in the trail, where her ear had been pointing.

Two's company; three's a crowd.

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Estaba agachada mirando unos hongos en un tronco, cuando algo me hizo levantar los ojos. No era un sonido; no oi nada, ni hubo movimiento, solo una sensación indefinida de no estar sola. Y allí estaba una cierva, a unos pocos metros. No se movía; nada más se quedó mirándome. Yo me enderecé. Ella no se movió.

Después de un rato, volvió la cabeza para mirarme mejor, y luego regresó a la postura anterior, pero ahora con una oreja vuelta para atrás.

(Observa esas orejas.)

Y ahí nos quedamos por un tiempo. Luego siguió tranquilamente su camino entre los troncos, y cruzó el sendero. Lentamente, volviendo a mirarme entre paso y paso. Y de repente dió un salto y desapareció entre los arbustos a la orilla del rio.

Yo no había oido nada, ni siquiera sus pasos. Pero apenas se había ido, una mujer apareció a la vuelta en el sendero, hacia donde la ciervita había apuntado esa oreja.

Giving up on the falls

Elk Falls is a roaring, foaming waterfall, at the bottom of the Campbell River canyon. Not a high fall, as falls go; the free-falling, plunge section of the falls is only 89 feet (27 metres), but still, it's an impressive sight and sound from a platform on the opposite side of the river.

Top end of the falls. The gorge is too narrow, the platform too close to get a photo of the whole falls.

The view from this lower platform, going backwards, up-river:

Bare rock, once washed by the much wider river; now a major part of the flow has been re-directed to the turbines, to provide electrical power to a large part of Vancouver Island.

And moving the gaze up-river again:

Still waters, barely seeming to move.

From the suspension bridge above, the bottom of the falls is visible, although through high (over my head,) daunting chain-link fencing. I took photos of the fence, instead:

Shy jumping spider and top of fence.

First huckleberry of the year. I ate it afterwards; it was sweet, but not too sweet.

On the way back up, near the top of the canyon, the fence is less forbidding. With snooty robin, who disapproved of my presence on his trail.

And at the top, beside the parking lot, the fence is temporary. And protects a young deer from traffic.

Deer in the headlights

I took the highway north tonight, getting beyond the light pollution from the city and from industry along the coast, looking for the Northern Lights. Up near Keta Lake, I found them, almost invisible above the rain and fog: a hint of green, waxing and waning, sometimes a flash of red. Disappointing. Maybe another day.

But on the way, a deer browsing beside the road stood to watch me, caught in my high beams.

Worth the drive. 9:23 PM. Sunset was at 7:40.

At Keta Lake, I got out of the car to scan the sky, smelled rotten fish, and scrambled back inside. Could have been a bear, but more likely a raccoon. Or even an eagle. Or a vulture. It was too dark to see anything, even a couple of feet away. After a while, the scent faded, and I got out again. And this time, the mosquitoes found me. Worse than bears!

The perils of a wilderness wanderer.

Thistles and critters

A patch of thistles between the blackberry bushes (with burdock alongside; it was a prickly field!) was a-buzz with flying and crawling critters.

Skipper, and a syrphid fly. I think the skipper is Ochlodes sylvanoides, the Woodland Skipper, very common here in BC.

The bees were busy, but in a great hurry, never parking on a flower long enough for me to focus on it. A lot of work to be done; there are blackberries and flyaway thistle fluff to be made, and it all falls on the bees' shoulders, or at least their leg buckets.

More thistles, more critters.

Most thistles are edible, but grazing animals, such as the deer that was browsing in the blackberry patch, usually ignore them. The leaves are spiny, and those spines are sharp, where the blackberry leaves are mostly thornless.

The berry pickers

I was picking blackberries on the edges of an open field; black, juicy, and a wee bit tart; delicious! I hadn't brought a container, so I was eating as fast as I picked. I turned a corner, and met another blackberry eater.

Young deer, as surprised as I was.

Deciding I'm safe, she goes back to her meal.

I was eating berries; she was eating the leaves. Those canes have sharp spines, strong enough to tear my clothes. She doesn't seem to mind them on her back.

She was maybe a bit too tame; I'm safe, but not all people are. But she let me walk, slowly, up to a couple of metres from her. Then she turned away from the berry bushes and faced me.

"Who are you," she says, "and what do you want?"

I backed away slowly, and went back to the far side of the blackberry patch.

Street lessons

Deer, like pigeons, spiders, and rats (this last, unfortunately), somehow adjust readily to urban environments. I've seen them in downtown Greater Vancouver, tripping unconcernedly across the street. Here in Campbell River, they browse in vacant lots, in neighbourhood gardens, in the weeds beside the highway.

Yesterday, coming out of a store, I met a doe and her fawn beside the parking lot.

The youngster still has his spots. And what big ears they have!*

This street is one of the busiest; there's always traffic. Just across the street, the machines are busy, tearing up the soil, preparing to build something large. A side alley leads to a parking lot, crammed with workers' cars.

And Ma Deer decided to take her youngster over there, away from me and my car.

Fences everywhere; no escape but by the street.

She stood on the side of the street, watching me, watching her fawn, watching the traffic, until it was safe to cross. Her fawn followed.

"Okay! Coast is clear; come on, kid!"

They crossed the road quickly, went towards the parking lot, then veered into a bit of bush, the fawn a few steps behind his mother all the way.

It was like watching a human mother teaching her kid to cross a street; good parenting, Ma Deer!

A store employee, going off work a minute later, told me that there's been a small family of deer among those trees across the street. She was glad the fawn is still fine.

*(I erased a couple of distracting cars out of that first photo.)

Decisions, decisions!

My grandkids were visiting, and we were coming home from exploring Woodhus Creek, when we met a deer family, two adults and a fawn, beside the road. The kids got out of the car and walked over, and to my surprise, the deer looked at them and went on browsing.

I stayed in the car, taking photos through the windshield.

The larger adult, looking well fed, chewing a mouthful of greens.

The fawn, and, I think, the mother. She's skinny, as if she's been nursing her baby.

Mother and fawn

The girls were sensible enough to keep quiet, move gently, and not approach too closely. The fat adult moved back into the bush, came up against a chain-link fence (visible in the top photo), and returned to go on with his meal. But the mother was nervous, and after a few minutes, she crossed the road, where the bush went on, without barriers, all the way down to the river.

She waited. The fawn tiptoed timidly out onto the road, and almost all the way across, before he started to wonder if this was the right thing. Here he was, halfway between one adult and the other, and not sure where to go. Neither of the adults moved to call him.
We humans all held our breath.

Which way? Which way?

(Aren't those the cutest little toes?)

Thinking it over

Eventually, the fawn went back to his starting point. The mother dithered, debating her next move. Back across the road to her fawn? Or stay there, on the path to safety, calling her baby to come on? She couldn't make up her mind, and we were not helping, just being there.

We loaded the kids back into the car and drove on.

Luckily, no other car came down the road, hurrying around the blind corner ahead, while the youngster stood, doubting, on the centre line.

We were here.

Velvety

A young male deer, one of a pair browsing on a residential street. Both had growing antlers.

He seems to have an injured knee, but was walking without a limp.

Deer grow their first set of antlers when they are approximately one year of age. (IWLA)

The antlers start growing in the spring, as the days are lengthening. At this stage, they are bones covered by a soft, nutrient-rich skin, called velvet. In the fall, the skin will dry and fall off, leaving only the hard bone. Later still, the knobby part at the base will deteriorate, and the antler will fall off. Next year's antlers will probably be bigger than this year's.

Valley of invisible birds

I was looking for birds, without much luck. I could hear them, even driving if the windows were open. A woman on the road had pointed out a couple of good birding sites; there were tanagers and goldfinches, she said. I saw nothing but flashes of yellow, rustling leaves.

A swatch of once-cleared land for the power lines looked like a good bet. I parked and hiked down the hill.

Birds gossiped and called all around me. None were visible. But ...

Deer in power line valley.

A well-travelled trail led off the main route into deep shade. I followed that, then another trail, this one barely visible, branching off down the hill. And came out onto the shores of the Oyster River.

Sandstone and shallow water.

I stopped at Woodhus Creek, which enters the Oyster a short distance upriver from this point, in the early spring. The water was up to the top of the banks, racing and tumbling down, roaring. The sound was deafening.

This week, the banks are dry, although the creek is still too deep to cross dry-shod. The Oyster River is wider and deeper, but shows the same pattern; sandstone banks, swept clean by the winter surge, smooth and dry under the summer sun.

The current is still strong enough for a good tumbling wave or two.

Sandstone rocks, carved and polished by water power.

More bird-free birding pics, tomorrow.

Spotty baby

A curve or two from the end of one of the outlying roads I've explored, there is a wide, park-like field up against the hillside. There is usually a deer or two grazing under the trees. And today, one of them was a fawn, still wearing his baby spots.

The fawn is a lifer for me!

The doe saw me, but allowed me to tiptoe, hiding behind tree trunks as often as possible, half-way across the field before she took her baby off into the bushes.

Made my day!

Drop in

I had been digging hawkweed out of the lawn for a couple of hours, and was finishing up in a corner when something made me turn around. And there was a young deer, standing on my freshly-cleaned grass, head up, ears perked, hesitating; nibble or run?

And I stood there, both hands full of hawkweed roots, afraid to breathe.

My landlord drove by with his dog in the car, and stopped to look. A long, paralyzed moment, and the deer made up his mind. He pivoted, walked two steps, then broke into a run and disappeared around the house towards the apple trees.

I see a deer or three every time I go for a drive, but I never hoped to see one on my front lawn, here a stone's throw from city centre.

Deer among the daisies. Not on my lawn.

I think I'll plant some lettuce for him.

Seen in passing

One of a pair of deer browsing across from a mall, taken through the car window.

A frozen moment; he watched me, I watched him. Only my shutter finger moved. And his ears. After a while, he went back to his lunch and I drove on.

Dividing the waters. Strathcona Dam.

I was born under a wanderin' star*.**  I can't resist a poorly travelled side road, curving out of sight under the trees. The Strathcona Dam was down one of these, about 30 km. out of Campbell River.

View over Upper Campbell Lake, from the top of the dam.

The dam is a wide earth-mound dam built by BC Hydro, dividing the Upper Campbell Lake from the smaller Campbell Lake. With two other local dams, they produce 11% of the electricity used on Vancouver Island. Below the dam, Hydro has provided a free campsite, open year-round. I didn't go down to it, and I don't think I could stay there; I watched a smaller dam disintegrate and take out a bridge that I'd just crossed when I was a teenager, and the memory sticks. I drove out onto the dam itself, took a few photos and went back to the safe road alongside the reservoir.

Through a gap in the trees. The distant mountain may be Victoria Peak, 2100 m.

Another view of that mountain.

Weak sunshine behind the clouds, reflected on the water.

I drove slowly, checking the bush on either side of the road as I went. When I saw a deer on the shore, I stopped the car, hoping it would ignore me. But it ran out of sight, and as I sat there, watching, five deer dashed out of the forest ahead of me, leaped across the road, and sprang up the hillside into deeper cover. There's nothing more beautiful than a half-flying deer. Except, maybe, five of them.

A slight foot trail led down the hillside to the water. I got out, now that there were no deer to startle, and walked down. This was where I found yesterday's cup mushrooms.

The area has been cleared. There's a fire pit down on the shore. And my car, hiding behind a tree up on the road.

This was strange. About 4 feet above ground, a dense clump of something grew from the bottom of a branch, curving upward. The stalks are not like the branches around them; darker, more solid-looking, newer (no lichen). Does anyone know what this is?

Water, water, everywhere. In the lakes, in pools, in ditches running along the roads. Dripping from the trees. And pouring down the hillsides around every curve. A zillion creeks with no name.

On the way home, I stopped to watch common goldeneyes in one of the small, green pools beside the highway. (They swam out of sight before I turned on the camera.)

The road was gravelled, muddy in spots, and pot-holed. Now I need more water. With soap.

*(Lee Marvin, YouTube)
** I came by it honestly. Dad used to say he had "itchy feet." I inherited them.