I’ve been in my new house for nine months now, and I see the same group of deer almost every day. They are slowly becoming more and more curious about me. Some of them have figured out that scratching with a hand is similar to grooming with a tongue.
The buck you see in this video, I call him Larry, has been in my yard a lot over the rut season, which is just ending. That's why two year old Susie in the video is keeping an eye on him. Susie is a real character. Ever since my first days in the house, she has had a constant interest in everything I do. She would often come up to me and smell my hand - a typical deer greeting. After about eight months of her following me around the yard, standing some feet away while she watched me rake pine needles or move rocks around, she started to lick my hand in the same way she licks other deer. I scratched back, and for about ten seconds she would really like that. Then she would tilt her head back and just look at me, as if thinking the whole thing over. A few days ago I was walking around the yard with the video camera and came across Susie's six month old sister who is very curious and brave. Susie watched us closely when the fawn took a short interest in mutual grooming. I then sat down off to the side of where the small herd was hanging out and just let the camera roll. Larry had been chasing the females around the yard, but had finally settled down. After about ten minutes, Susie strolled over. It was the first time that she indicated that she made up her mind about me. I was lucky to have the camera rolling!
For those of you familiar with our Deer in the Yard videos, all of our previous videos were at Marlis’ house around the corner from my new house. Now that we have two yards with two different groups of deer, our Deer in the Yard videos will show scenes from both yards.
We have known all the generations of deer in Marlis’ yard for almost 17 years. I’m just getting to know my local group. It’s been nine months of them seeing me every day before they have begun to feel really at ease. Although they are “neighbors” with Marlis’ deer, the deer have an invisible line a few hundred yards from my house that is the border with Marlis' deer's territory. The bucks cross the borders, but the females and fawns have stricter routines, and females will chase other females away if they cross zones.
"My" deer used to hang out in my yard before I moved in, and when I put a salt block in the yard, put in two bird baths always full with water, regularly spill bird food when I fill up the bird feeder, and generally respect their space, over all these months they have come to accept my presence more and more. Our local deer are very careful about who they befriend. If anyone else walks into the yard without me there, they will usually run away. However, when Marlis walks over to my house, they will carefully watch her coming from a quarter mile away, but then they will approach her when she comes into my yard. They have met her many times before, but she doesn’t live here, and so they are taking their time getting to know her. Still, as soon as she approaches, they sense that she is somehow, in some deer sense, “okay.”
The music in the video is a piece we call, "In's Herz der Dinge," in English meaning "Into the heart of things."
The version in this video is from a concert recording that we never put on a CD, but another nice version of it is on this CD from us: starseedmusic.n...
28 сен 2024
