Bleats, Moos and Roars

I've quoted before the words of Richard Jefferies, the Victorian writer and naturalist; and seeing this beast this morning reminded me of this paragraph:

"The land is his, and the hills, the sweet streams, and rocky glens. He is infinitely more natural than the cattle and sheep that have strayed into his domains. For some inexplicable reason, although they too are in reality natural, when he is present they look as if they had been put there and were kept there by artificial means. They do not, as painters say, shade in with the colours and shápe of the landscape. He is as natural as an oak, or a fern, or a rock itself. He is earth-born— autochthon—and holds possession by descent. Utterly scorning control, the walls and hedges are nothing to him.—he roams where he chooses, as fancy leads.”

How prosaic the farm animals look in comparison and how irritating their mooing and bleatings.

We had earlier seen three stags on the lower slopes of Blacka Hill in the early lightness of the morning. They were clearly younger animals and quick to make off.


The solitary stag, at the top of this post, was a larger more confident beast, standing fairly still, not feeding and clearly the master of the local herd. Every so often he threw out a roar to challenge all comers.

The short movie below is inadequate and only included with misgivings and many apologies for the shaking of the camera. But it is the first and only clip I have so far taken of a stag on Blacka in full roar.