Peek-a-boo

When I came across ghostly Indian Pipe featured a few days ago I was actually looking for deer because about 50% of the times I visit Fort Rodd Hill I see a deer (sometimes two) on the road. Usually my camera bag is safely locked up in the luggage carrier on the back of my scooter. This time I decided to stop before seeing a deer, get my camera out, set it up properly and put it around my neck so that when I spied a deer I would be ready. Here are the results of that planning. Though these deer are wild, they are quite tame and will tolerate you if you don't move around too much or approach too closely. Fort Rodd Hill has some quite large areas of forest and is adjacent to Esquimalt Lagoon and the Royal Roads University Campus, which also have large contiguous areas of forest so it is not surprising to see deer there. Similarly for a beautiful young buck I saw a few weeks ago in Mount Douglas Park, another fairly expansive area. The most surprising deer I've seen in the city though was one I saw along the railway tracks here in Victoria West, pictured here, and more recently one I saw in Highrock Park, which is a very small park in a densely populated residential area. Yet no matter where I see one of these graceful creatures it's always a treat. This is a young Blacktail Deer.

Blacktail Buck

I went out yesterday to photograph some old brick. A few blocks from my house is the marshaling yard of the E & N Railway, which has several large old brick buildings. It is surrounded by new condominiums and is soon to be developed as a heritage mall and social area. While I was lurking around in the bushes in the back of these buildings trying to find some good shooting angles, I heard some rustling. I looked up to see this beautiful young buck disappearing around a corner of the building. I followed and the result is this photo. I took a few others but the buck is not so clear although the skate board park shows up well (off camera to the right in this photo).

What is amazing about this sighting is that this neighborhood is very near the city center, not rural at all and not even on the edge of any bushy or forested areas. I suspect he must have come in at night along the railway tracks from outside the city, perhaps in pursuit of a doe since this is rutting season. I worried about him getting mixed up with city traffic but then I realized that he's probably safer here than out in a forest full of neanderthal Nimrods with big guns. Hunting season on blacktail deer opens next week.

Animals

Today I cycled out to Esquimalt Lagoon because I wanted to photograph some deer and I saw one near there when I was out at Fisgard Lighthouse a little while ago. Esquimalt Lagoon has an odd history: At the end of the last ice age about 10,000 years ago a big chunk of ice about 100 meters thick was left by a receding glacier. Sand and gravel piled up around its edges and when it melted it left a depression that is now the lagoon. The lagoon is also the site of the first European landing in this area. Spanish explorer Don Manuel Quimper anchored here in 1790. The birds in the photo above are the indigenous Great Blue Heron and...a Mute Swan. The latter is not indigenous but is native to the UK and has naturalized itself here and in a few other nearby coastal locations after escaping from Beacon Hill Park in Victoria. However, what first attracted my attention to the lagoon was the little fellow below.I thought it was a Sea Otter and had visions of how I could ramble on about the history of the fur trade but when I checked it out, I realize it must be a River Otter, which species often inhabits coastal areas and is a known resident of the lagoon. He was very shy and I had to follow him along the shoreline for some time before I could get close enough to snap the above shot. That was when I saw the other swan, below.Deer - yes, on the way back from the lagoon, there she was posing beautifully by the roadside and my camera in its bag. Pull up, peacefully assemble apparatus, and catch a last glimpse as she disappears into the bush. Ah well, still a splendid morning on the outskirts of Victoria.