Anne Elliott's photos with the keyword: white spots

Another smoky day here in Calgary (21 July 2017), with a temperature of 20C this morning and cloudy. The air quality yesterday was expected to reach High Risk, but it seemed to be bearable late in the afternoon. So, I took a drive along some of my favourite roads SW of the city, seeing a few of the 'usual' things. I really hope that rain will arrive soon to help the firefighters in British Columbia and in Alberta, too! So much devastation. In between photographing Mountain Bluebirds, I drove part way along a road that I had only ever been on once before, and that was quite recently. Usually, I am home earlier than I was yesterday. This later time meant that I was lucky enough to see two families of deer - White-tailed and Mule Deer. The animals in this photo were the second family I saw. A short distance before, I had seen a Mule Deer doe with her fawn standing at the edge of the road. I pulled over way down the road and waited till they had safely crossed. Managed to get a couple of distant shot through the windscreen, with the usual poor quality results. I knew that there would be a barbed-wire fence the far side of the road and I didn't want to spook them and risk them getting tangled in the sharp barbs. Several years ago, I had seen a huge Moose get spooked and then get briefly tangled in barbed wire - it spooked when it suddenly realized that some cows had quietly come up behind it!

Yesterday, 5 September 2016, was one of those days that I wasn't really feeling like bothering to get myself ready and go for a walk, but something kept 'telling' me to go. So, I drove over to Fish Creek Park, hoping that I would be able to find one of the Black-crowned Night-herons that people have been seeing recently. Last year, I was lucky enough to see a juvenile on a couple of occasions at this location. However, I was out of luck with the herons and everything else, till just before I got back to my car. I spotted a patch of tan colour way off in the distance, through the bushes. Stopping to take a better look, I saw that it was a beautiful doe and her twins. They walked up a slight hill and I was able to get a clear look at them. Yes, the photo is blurry, but I so rarely see White-tailed Deer fawns, so I wanted to post the image for the record. Love it when the young ones still have their white spots. Definitely worth getting lightly rained on : ) "White-tailed deer, the smallest members of the North American deer family, are found from southern Canada to South America. In the heat of summer they typically inhabit fields and meadows using clumps of broad-leaved and coniferous forests for shade. During the winter they generally keep to forests, preferring coniferous stands that provide shelter from the harsh elements. Female deer, called does, give birth to one to three young at a time, usually in May or June and after a gestation period of seven months. Young deer, called fawns, wear a reddish-brown coat with white spots that helps them blend in with the forest. White-tailed deer are herbivores, leisurely grazing on most available plant foods. Their stomachs allow them to digest a varied diet, including leaves, twigs, fruits and nuts, grass, corn, alfalfa, and even lichens and other fungi. Occasionally venturing out in the daylight hours, white-tailed deer are primarily nocturnal or crepuscular, browsing mainly at dawn and dusk. In the wild, white-tails, particularly the young, are preyed upon by bobcats, mountain lions, and coyotes. They use speed and agility to outrun predators, sprinting up to 30 miles (48 kilometers) per hour and leaping as high as 10 feet (3 meters) and as far as 30 feet (9 meters) in a single bound." From National Geographic. animals.nationalgeographic.com/animals/mammals/white-tail...

Please try to convince yourself that this is an action shot and so this cute little Mule (?) Deer fawn should be a little (all right, a LOT) blurred, LOL. Yesterday evening, we were out in Fish Creek Park to see a variety of wildflowers. By the time we got back to the parking lot, it began to spot with rain and there was an incredibly beautiful double rainbow. As I pulled out of the parking lot, I spotted a Mule Deer doe and her little fawn. Drove around for a few minutes to watch them and then returned to the parking lot, where we stopped. This little creature was exploring and having fun and then suddenly looked over at my car and came trotting in a dead straight line towards it. Wasn't able to get my camera to focus through the windscreen, but managed to get this quick and blurry photo when it realized that Mom was too far away : )