Videos: Deer in the Yard

Here are a couple of videos of deer in the yard.  Above, I was standing maybe 20 feet away from a fawn early in the morning, and neither of us was sure what to make of the other.  Below, I took this video from inside the house of a deer making it way through the yard, and helping to trim the grass.  I don't think the deer is interested in doing the whole yard for me, though...

A Foggy Dawn in Freeville

Yesterday morning, I was still awake, finishing a video for my newborn nephew, when I looked out the window and spotted a doe in the backyard.  I went over to the patio door to take a picture, but the doe scurried away.

Noticing the mist, I figured it would be a good morning for pictures of the creek, and it certainly was...

As I was on the dock, I heard a weak "eep" coming from above me.  I turned around to see this:

I wonder if this is the same fawn that I saw laying in my wildflowers a week or two ago.  Not wanting to startle the fawn too much, and knowing that the doe might be not far off keeping an eye on the situation, I stayed on the dock to take a downstream photo:

I turned around again and the fawn was out of sight, so I climbed the stairs to head back to the house, and the fawn was still in the yard.  We had a staring contest...like his/her mom, this young deer is very good at them.   I also shot a short video of the fawn, which may make it onto the Tube of You sometime in the future.  I'm sure this won't be our last encounter.

Staring Contest with a Deer

 I was sitting in my living room just a few minutes ago when a young doe came along and stopped right next to the patio.  I picked up my camera a took a couple of photos, and my movement attracted the attention of the deer.  She stood there and stared at me for a minute or so, then turned and fled for the safety of the yard.  But then she turned around and stared back at me again: 

 Then she turned again, and it looked like she was going to run away.  But curiosity must have gotten the better of her, and once again she stopped, turned back toward the house, and pawed the ground as she stared back at me yet again. 

I'm guessing that this doe is two or three years old, recently independent of her mother, who appears to have just had another fawn, which I discovered in my yard last week.  I'll be keeping my eyes open for all of them over the rest of the summer.

Midnight Deer

I was late one night last week and I was finally winding down for the night.  I happened to glance out the window to see two deer grazing in the snow-covered grass by the post office.  I've seen them late at night before wandering around downtown Freeville as if they too, are citizens of our little town, but this is the first time I've managed to capture this in action.  I turned off my flash so as not to startle them (and to avoid a big flash in the window), so you can probably just barely make out their silhouettes.  The two deer are standing in the foreground in front of the church, facing away from each other.

Deer on the Creek

No photos of deer in this post.  But thanks to the ice and snow on the creek, you can see where they've been.  And yes, they walked right across the dock, probably sometime yesterday.

Even about a foot from the edge of the ice, the ice is thick enough to support the weight of the deer.  I wasn't about to try climbing onto it, though.

Meanwhile, the middle of the creek is still flowing, with small ice floes still drifting along.

I had to take one more photo of the creek, but only to capture the rare (for February) reflection of blue skies and cumulus clouds.

Why Did the Deer Cross the Road?

I saw an article yesterday mentioned in the Cornell University Facebook feed, and it happens to be great fodder for the blog.  The article interviewed a Cornell faculty member, Paul Curtis of the Natural Resources department, about the habits of deer, particularly with respect to their tendencies toward vehicular accidents.  I'll share some highlights from the article here and link to the whole thing below.

Deer accidents are most common in late fall and early winter - October, November, and December - because this is the breeding season.  Males tend to be a bit more concerned with chasing a mate than with looking both ways.  It also doesn't help that due to daylight savings time, later sunrises, and earlier sunsets, rush hour moves closer to dawn and dusk (when deer are most active) during these months.

There's also three weeks from late May through early June when accidents peak again, as females prepare to give birth and send their older fawns packing.  These yearlings are on their own for the first time, and they're likely exploring unfamiliar ground on top of that, as they have to establish their own territory.  Females tend to stay close to home - within 5 to 10 miles of their mother's range - but males can stray as far as 50 miles.  Around here, females would tend to stay in the county, while males could end up in the Syracuse or Binghamton areas!

The most surprising tidbit from the article was his advice for what to do if you are headed for a deer in the middle of the road and don't have time to brake.  "The best thing to do is to just hit the deer and keep driving as straight as possible and slow down as quickly as you can. Most people are injured in deer accidents when they try to swerve to avoid a deer. I tell motorists that the deer is the softest thing you’re likely to hit. The most serious human injuries incur when you hit a guardrail or tree."  Somehow, I don't think he's advising you to hit the accelerator.

He also blames the preponderance of deer accidents, at least in part, on the over-use of deer crossing signs.  Deer tend to follow the same paths (I've noticed this in my yard, and it's only become more obvious in the snow), so in theory, marking the most common trails with signs should reduce accidents  But the signs have been so common - and often say "Next 2 miles" rather than specifying a crossing - so that due to this over-saturation, we tend to ignore them.

There's more good stuff in the article; check it out!

Link:
http://www.insurancequotes.com/paul_curtis-cornell-deer-vehicles/

Deer Fencing

One step I haven't taken in the yard is to protect my younger plants - especially the shrub that I planted in late October -  from hungry deer.  The shrub is supposed to be quite deer-resistant, so I'm expecting that now that's it's lost its leaves for the winter, it will be unappetizing to the deer.  But all around, I see plenty of people who have protected young trees and other plants from the hungry ungulates.  Come springtime, when I look to add more plants, shrubs, and trees to the yard, I may have to take that step.  I'll certainly look into it over the winter.  The photos in this post, by the way, were taken on the Cornell University campus near the man-made Beebe Lake, which is along Fall Creek several miles downstream from my house.

On a deer-related note,  I recently saw a road-kill deer about a mile down the road from my house, not far outside of the village limits.  I haven't seen the three deer who frequent my yard lately, but I hope it wasn't one of them.  The county has a deer overpopulation problem, it's true, but I haven't seen more than this family of three right in Freeville.

The Cornell campus and vicinity has a much larger deer problem.  I heard a few years ago that the deer population on campus was about 80, and I doubt that it's changed much since then.  The village of Cayuga Heights, which adjoins Cornell to the north, has recently decided to take action by sterilizing deer caught in its limits.