Tag Archives: black-tailed deer

Rain Deer

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A close-up view of a black-tailed deer doe in the rain at Ridgefield National Wildlife Refuge

After posting that I finally had gotten a picture of a deer at Ridgefield that I liked, the very next morning I arrived early in a heavy rain and found a doe and buck just past the entrance gate and before getting onto the refuge proper. I parked my car in a little pullout, rolled down the window, and draped a towel over the door to protect the insides from the rain. I watched the two of them for quite some time, I had the refuge to myself as apparently others don’t like the rain as much as I do.

I got this close look at the damp doe as she grazed in a small meadow at the top of the refuge. There used to be a lot of other meadows in the area even just a couple of years ago but they’ve been plowed under as Ridgefield has exploded into a bedroom community for Portland and Vancouver.

The Soft Light

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A black-tailed deer doe eats plants near the auto tour at Ridgefield National Wildlife Refuge

A black-tailed doe in the soft early light

May is a wonderful time to be at Ridgefield, but it can be frustrating too, as the gates don’t open until well after sunrise and close before sunset. On a sunny day, that means the best light of the day is gone before you can even get onto the refuge and find an interesting subject.

But on a cloudy day, which we’ve had a lot of lately, you can still get some beautiful soft light even an hour after sunrise, and useable light for much of the day. I came across this black-tailed doe early one morning as she dined on plants in the River S Unit. It’s not exactly rare to see deer at the refuge, but not all that common either, and this is the first time I’ve been happy with one I’ve photographed there.

Too bad she didn’t have any young fawns with her! Or maybe she did, I would have never seen them in the tall grass.

Nibbler

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A black-tailed deer doe eats leaves from a blackberry vine in a meadow in Prairie Creek Redwood State Park

Deer lack upper canine teeth but compensate by pinching vegetation against a calloused part of their mouth. This doe was eating the leaves of the blackberry bush by pressing the leaves to the roof of her mouth with her tongue and then pulling them off. She and her little ones were ignoring the other plants of the meadow and exclusively feeding on the blackberry leaves.

Big Trees, Big Lens, & Sam the Snowman

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A black-tailed fawn eats leaves from a blackberry vine in a meadow in Prairie Creek Redwood State Park

When packing for my trip to the redwoods, I went back and forth on whether I should bring my big telephoto lens. It’s so large and heavy that I wasn’t planning on hiking with it and didn’t expect to have much use for it among the big trees in any event. But with the hope of seeing harbor seals on the coast, I packed it alongside the rest of my camera gear.

A fortuitous decision but not because of harbor seals — I did see seals but not in good light. No, it was the meadows in the southern half of Redwood National Park that caught my fancy with the big glass, several families of black-tailed deer grazed one meadow and a herd of elk another.

Near sunset on my first full day in the park, a family of blacktails browsed on the blackberry vines that grew sporadically amongst the tall grasses of the meadow. I pointed the big lens at one fawn and was particularly delighted to see who was staring back at me: Sam the Snowman, the narrator from the Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer Christmas special I watched many times as a child.

Face of a black-tailed deer fawn