fallow deer brotherly love 2
Originally uploaded by j_wijnands.

There's a big chestnut tree that has been claimed by a very dominant male. Usually he's there alone bellowing to the other males in the area. On Monday morning he finally had company, quite a lot of company in fact. I counted at least 4 somewhat interested females and a score of young males that the big guy would sometimes chase away.

Also present, and that's something I don't see all that often, is these two very young males. Born this year and so young they don't even have antlers yet. Also so young that the big buck didn't feel threatened enough to chase them away.

All these are tricky shots. Half an hour after sunrise there's not that much light reaching trough that big chestnut tree. To get this relatively unobstructed view I had to move very slowly and ended up kneeling on a gravel path for almost 15 minutes before I caught these.



Photography like this can be improved by throwing money at it. Any of the more expensive bodies with a clean iso 3200 or even 6400 would have been nice to have. A longer and especially faster lens would have helped. But, the D300 with a humble 70-300 does a decent job as well.