An Ear

In July we usually try to look out for signs that the hinds have produced calves. But the odds are heavily stacked against sighting any young deer with the bracken being at the zenith of its growth. Yet there have been very tiny footprints in some places. Usually the best to hope for is to see hinds and this morning an ear was visible above the bracken just where I started to look. It's not always that easy! But the cover was too impenetrable for calves, if there were any, to be visible.


Ten minutes later making our way up Bole Hill we looked back and caught a distant view of hinds further over probably the same ones. Could that small one be a young calf?



In the afternoon a group of four stags were munching away on the section of Totley Moor just west of Blacka. They could have been bilberrying in common with numerous blackbirds and thrushes. But no evidence of jam jars or plastic containers.