Whenever I am outdoors I seem to get more than my fair share of mosquito bites and it really bugs me (pun intended). So when I was watching these deer at Dunham Massey I could really empathise with their plight. Look at how they must suffer with the swarms of evil bitey flies.
The young stag in the final two images seems to be suffering much more than the others and at first I couldn't think why. However I think the first image might just give us a clue.
When I saw the deer in the first shot I thought he had some fabric or an old boot lace twisted around his antlers but if you look closely you will see that that is not the case. The stag in the last two shots has the downy velvet coating still covering his antlers whereas the first one has antlers which have been scraped "clean" of the velvet and the tassles are the remnants of the soft outer layer. I think that the velvet has a fresh supply of blood and so that will be why it is so attractive to the flies and why this poor creature has such an annoying following while the other have less of a problem.
One other thing that I noticed during my walk around the park was that the young female deer were really quite skittish and shy whereas the young bucks were more relaxed. In just a few weeks however there will be a major change in the behaviour as the rut begins and the bucks will become more aggressive in an attempt to achieve dominance within the herd, it won't be quite so easy to get up close to these marvellous creatures then.
