Monday, March 22, 2021

Animal Behavior

I see deer out my window most mornings. They seldom travel alone, but groups can be any size from two to maybe eight. (It's hard to count the larger groups because they're moving around in the woods and aren't all visible at once.) I don't know how these groups form, or whether the same animals are usually or perhaps always associated with the same groups. Perhaps it has to do with kinship. Maybe naturalists have more information on this. In early summer you will often see a doe with her fawn, but in winter and early spring you will see these variable groups. 

 

A couple of days  ago there was a group of six, browsing in verge between my front lawn and the woods. I saw a couple of things I had never seen before. One was what might be called grooming behavior. Two of the animals started licking, and perhaps nibbling, on each other's neck. This might be a form of social bonding, but it could also achieve removal of ticks. 

 

Shoots haven't started to come yet here in Windham County, so I really have no idea what they could have been eating, but it was something in the dirt. One of them started digging with its forefeet, and eating something it found in the disturbed soil. I walked down there and took a look. It had dug up quite a large area, irregular but roughly three feet in diameter. However, I couldn't see anything interesting that gave me any hint of what it might have been after. That the deer disturb the forest soil in this way was news to me.


As interesting as all this is, and as  attractive as they are, the deer population has grown wildly out of control. Since there aren't any Indians, cougars or wolves to kill them, and hunting is no longer very popular among us European settlers, they just breed and eat. There are many more deer in New England today than there were before the Europeans came, and they damage the forest. Their only effective natural enemy is the automobile, unfortunately, and that also makes them directly dangerous to humans. If you want to hunt on my property, you're welcome to.

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