White-tailed Deer

White-tailed Deer are frequent visitors to our gardens. These beautiful, graceful creatures come sometime during the night or early dawn and munch away at our Phlox and Hosta plants; as well as other plants too. Evident in the morning are often hoofprints in the soil and a chewed plant. We stopped having a vegetable garden a couple of years ago as it just wasn't worth the work; now we grow tomatoes in pots and that is the extent of our food growing endeavours. Deer love cedar as well and a few years ago several spent one winter munching contendly on our hedge.

Some years there is more activity around our yard than others. Once visitors from the west kept hoping to catch a glimpse of a White-tail before they returned home but it not happen. However, about an hour after their departure we counted eight deer on our side lawn that morning. That really is a lot and not a usual number for us to see. In fact I haven't seen a deer in our yard for a long time but I know when they have been there by viewing the remnants of some plants in the morning.

I snapped a picture of these three deer feeding along the roadside in May of this year. Seen below is a male White-tailed Deer; a buck. This picture was taken from my car window.



A fawn (below), a young White-tailed Deer ventured onto our property last summer and stayed long enough to have its photo taken.