The light’s going now. It’s coming up to 10pm and we’re driving back home; chatting, unwinding and taking in the expansive views. We’ve just been on a post-dinner ‘game drive’ along the local backroads of Northumberland National Park – our new-normal night out in these crazy-Covid times and part of our self-commissioned 2020 assignment to document the wild beauty in our own back-yard.
Tonight’s photographic haul hasn’t been much to shout about – the hares weren’t playing ball (again) so there’s really just the couple of okay portraits of a whinchat we got earlier on, to justify our existence. Still it’s better than maxing out on TV box-sets back home. Game driving is a balm; the national park is beautiful in early summer and even more empty and quiet than in the old-normal.
As we said, there’s no light left to speak of, but that doesn’t stop us reaching for a camera when suddenly we’re questioning just what we’re seeing in the pasture by the road, against the craggy backdrop of undulating hills on our left. Fallow deer? Are you sure? It’s just a head and partial upper body poking above the lime green young bracken fronds, but there’s no doubt. Its budding antlers are sueded in buff-grey. Even though the conditions are rubbish we want to get a shot if we can for the record. This is a species you don’t see everyday in the national park. Roe deer yes, but not these guys. By now we can see that actually there’s a small herd of young bucks feeding out in the open. They seem as curious as we are, lifting their heads at the sound of the shutter, and they hold their poses long enough for us to get one or two images. They’re still busy grazing so we grab a few more images – we’re not fussing too much over perfection at this point.
Although fallow deer are not a native species in Britain they are now considered naturalised and are widespread in England and Wales. According to the British Deer Society the population are mostly descended from escapees from medieval deer parks. We vaguely remember, as we’re photographing, there have been odd sightings of them in this area from time to time and there was once a deer park here back in the day, reflected in the name of this locality, Billsmoor Park. Looking at this small herd, their graceful pale shapes now ghostly in the gloaming, you can totally understand why they were prized and kept as ornamental species. We’ve lived in the area for more than 13 years and we’ve never spotted them before. Ramblers sometimes catch a distant glimpse, but they are certainly not a common sight. (When we checked up later back home, we discovered our fallow deer were originally introduced to the former deer park in the area in the nineteenth century).
Is it because the road was extra-quiet during the lockdown that they felt more confident to come down close. Or was it simply the fact that we were out there looking harder than we have before? Whose behaviour changed? Perhaps both species modified their ways…
No time to ponder things right now. There’s just seconds to slow the shutter speed right down in anticipation of their flight response now they’ve cottoned on to us. It’s the only way for us to go now that it’s almost dark. Maybe, if we’re lucky, there’ll be the chance of pulling off a panning shot of them bounding off – a blur of tan flanks and white spots flying across our dreams and away.
