Yesterday, we bumped into this red deer herd during a nice stroll through the Windsor Great Park.

[click the pics for a larger view]

Autumn is a good time to see these guys in action in UK great parks. Thanks to the rut, otherwise solitary males approach the ladies, and things get a bit heated up.

On the move, they resemble more of a bird flock than an ungulate herd. Here, I was lying on the grass holding the camera, hoping to hide myself. I take it from their looks that I wasn’t very successful.

As graceful as they are, still, if I were a red deer, I would be quite jealous of my generously decorated cousin, the fallow deer, Dama dama*.

This pano is from couple weeks ago in Richmond Park. These fallow boys were resting under a roadside tree with absolutely no care for passers-by. This is probably an early stage of a lek; an icebreaker social before the fierce tournament…

* After a non-exhaustive search for the root for its Latin name to no avail, I happily settled for the Turkish word for checkers, ‘dama’.