quidnovis61

According to our meteorologists this last winter has been the coldest and most severe since 1947. Days and days of darkness, heavy snowfall,  dangerous roads like icy black ribbons snaked its way in the white landscape, bitter cold temperatures, icicles from roofs - and no signs of intermittent thaw to let up the dismal gloom of a long hard winter. It is with a smile of reminiscence that I, today, write of this – as today is undoubtedly the hottest day of our long awaited summer with temperatures around +30°C. It is a strange phenomenon of the mind that remembers the good times even in the midst of disconsolation – be it personal, global or indeed meteorological!

Oh dear deer, I digress – as always.

It isn’t meteorology I want to write about here but rather - Deer! The Scandinavian winter is indeed like a Christmas card or a picture postcard but not all living creatures appreciate its foudroyant beauty.

Three of them were Harriet and her two kids Herbert and Hilda.

They were foraging for food. The permafrost and knee-deep snow made it almost impossible for them to find anything to eat. The earth was too hard with ice to enable them to dig with their hooves to find last year’s grass and shoots. Newspapers wrote of starving birds and animals that no longer could fend for themselves in the inhospitable climate and wildlife researchers were speculating on the decrease in various animal species due to the uncommon cold. Hunters and wildlife enthusiasts and many many people made sure there was “food” in certain feeding areas in forests and gardens. Birdseeds, lard, hay, corn, carrots, potatoes, apples and so on…..

I found Harriet, Herbert and Hilda one late evening under the birdhouse - busy eating the shells (or as it is correctly called – the hulls) of the sunflower seeds that were on the ground.


SUNFLOWEWR SEEDS (picture from the Internet)

(Birds have the most dreadful table manners! Once they have eaten (dehulled) the kernel they just drop the hulls all over the place. No matter how often I chided them for this from the window, like recalcitrant children, they never listened!) But of course that proved to be a boon for my trio - Harriet and Herbert and Hilma!

Yes they are my dear deer. European Roe Deer to be absolutely correct and Carl von Linné (1700s, Swedish botanist, physician adn zoologist who laid the foundations for the modern scheme of binominal nomenclature) gave them the grand name of Capreolus capreolus. It is however interesting to note how it got its English name. According to etymologists it could have be derived from raha (O.E) or ra (Old Norse) or reh (German) or even further back rei (proto-Indo-European, meaning streaked or spotted). In Sweden they are called Rådjur (directly translated - roe-animal). They are said to be native to Britain, having been present since before the Mesolithic period (6000 to 10000 years b.p !!!) and have been close to extinct in the 1800s! (Perish the thought! Can you imagine a world without Salten’s Bambi??) Fortunately they are in abundance now and in Sweden alone there are about a million roe deer.

On the day I found all three under our birch tree outside Elizabeth’s window I had no camera close by. Any slight movement to go fetch one would mean that all three would bolt in fright to our birch-pine forest just across the road. So I waited… I would get the opportunity – one day. And then I would be ready! And sure enough, a few says later WHO do I see in the garden? Yes, Harriet!
(They are solitary animals once the fawns are old enough to fend for themselves)


HARRIET IN THE GARDEN!

Roe deer are supposed to be active mostly in the twilight hours/dawn/dusk but I think, in the cold dark winters they mistake midday for dusk. Such is the paucity of light during the winter in the Scandinavian countries! They change colours from reddish brown in the summer to a dull grey brown in the winter and a “rump patch” of bright white – thus in the wintry forests here they are aptly camouflaged!



On my daily forest walks I have heard them barking and if I stand still for a few minutes, I see something rustle in the foliage and a graceful head lifts up from the constant hunt for shrubs, berries, grass and tender shoots to “size me up”. Then I am thankfully given a silent certificate stamped Not A Threat, valid for the rest of my walk while it resumes its constant grazing…. Sometimes in the early summer I have been lucky to see a fawn hidden in the long grass, its ears just barely discernable. The white rump patch with the tail up flashes as a warning signal during eminent danger and can be clearly seen. It never ceases to amaze me how Mom Nature has provided and taken care of all its living creatures.

This winter I put out food for Harriet and her two kids twice a night – once at 8 pm and once before bedtime, 11 pm-ish. Every week our shopping list would have “Roe Deer Food” on it. That meant apples, carrots and potatoes that we bought in 2-3 kilo packs. Leftover overripe pears, a few grapes, cabbage stock and leaves were also part of the fare.

Silently, they would come from the forest across the road, lithely jump over the ditch, gracefully leap over the masses of snow and into the garden knowing that there would be food on the ground (or more rightly on the snow.) And every night it was a moment of complete peace and harmony, an enormous sense of gratification to stand by the window and watch them eat. Harriet would munch away. Hilda would join in after a while, sometimes she would miss out unfortunately because she was too late!


 

SWEET GRACEFUL HILDA







And Herbert would trustingly look up and see me at the window as if to say: Ah, the meal was abs deli, Missus! And for me, that was Thank You enough.


HERBERT


(When the male's antlers begin to regrow, they are covered in a thin
layer of velvet-like fur which disappears later) 

Once the meal was over they would saunter away into the back garden or to the front of the house past the sun-deck, past my Volvo in search of more food or sunflower seed shells.


HILDA WALKING PAST THE SUN-DECK - TAKEN FROM MY KITCHEN WINDOW


HILDA GOING PAST MY VOLVO!!

Sometimes the sweeping headlights of a car or something else beyond the grasp of the human ear or sight would startle them and they would bound sure-footed, in a flash to the safety of the forest.

After many days of feeding them I was finally “rewarded” – for the first time there were deer spilling in the garden on the snow! That was a clue that they were not starving any longer. They would make it through the winter!


CRISS CROSSING TRACKS IN THE GARDEN




DEER HOOVES AND SPILLING

And then spring came, slowly, hesitantly, almost reluctantly… but Spring nevertheless with its aeonian promise of
Rebirth
    Renewal
        Rejuvenation...

For a few days I still kept giving them food. But one day they stopped coming. There was enough in the forest, nearby grasslands and woodlands to sustain them.

Antler-duels were waiting to be fought…
Warm resting places were waiting to be discovered...
Fresh tender grass were waiting to be munched…
And
Little fawns were waiting to be born…

Photo by Jan Bo Kristensen, Denmark, May 2006 - FROM THE INTERNET

Signing off for now.

C.S!
(Cresat Scientia/ May knowledge grow/Må kunskapen växa)

(It was rather difficult to take night photos through the window with the aid of just one street light nearby hence the poor quality of the photos... I cannot take photos with the flash either as it will frighten them)