I live in a small town which is surrounded by agriculture and forestry.
There are many roe deer around here and from what I gather, they mostly form small groups in winter while in summer they split up and hold their territories.
During summer (from spring to fall) I often observe either roe deer alone or a male with one or two roe deer females (and later also fawns).
I have not collected any data but it seems from observations that the population might be of moderate density and one male’s territory mostly corresponds to one female’s territory (and more rarely – one male’s territory corresponds to two females’ territories (which as I understand is more characteristic of low density populations).
During the spring gestation and early parturition period (April – June) I have occasionally observed two behaviours of which one is more frequent than the other.
I am aware that roe deer bucks would guard their territories against other bucks from spring to fall and that they would also come to rescue if, for example, the doe who lived on his territory was courted by an unwanted male (intruder) during rut (mid-July – August).
I have not, however, read anything about further parental investment (guarding the mate during gestation, parturition, co-parenting etc.).
My observations (that are scarce because I have limited access to populations but, at the same time, the observations span over several years), suggest that roe deer might also be mate-guarding during spring when territorial behaviour, according to my assumptions, coincides with doe-protective behaviour during pregnancy.
1.
The more frequent behaviour that I have observed (on about 10 occasions) is the following –
The roe deer buck is out in the open while the female (females) remain more secluded (e.g., in the shrubs).
Generally, in April – May the females are hardly seen compared to the males and compared to males and females later (or earlier) in the season.
As I walk by, the roe deer male notices me. (Here I am the disturbance factor or potential predator).
The buck runs toward where the females are located barking loudly.
Sometimes this is a short distance (e.g., leaping into the nearby shrubs) but sometimes the buck runs, e.g., across the field.
On some occasions I have not been able to spot the female (females) but mostly I have been aware that they are nearby and that the male has run toward them – warning them.
Sometimes (less often) the buck would not run but simply turn his head toward the thicket to direct his alarm calls.
(Commentary from Sandro Lovari suggests that this might also be predator attention-displacement behaviour where the roe deer buck does not act protectively but rather attracts the predators’ attention to the less mobile females and away from himself – a view that I understand but do not endorse fully.)
I have observed yet another type of behaviour in the same context where the roe deer male barks at me (which could be considered less protective and more territorial behaviour).
In these instances, the roe deer stays put or retreats some distance and then holds ground and barks facing me.
The roe deer are rather habituated to humans around here (semi-urban, peri-urban situation) and in the instances when they run away, disappear and bark, they do not seem more alarmed of me than in the instances where they face me and bark at me.
This is why I find it interesting and significant that the running away and barking behaviour (vs. staying put and barking at the disturbance behaviour) is mostly observed precisely in April – July which coincides with the greater vulnerability of the females (greater need for protection or, as proposed by Mr. Lovari, greater chance at displacing depredation risk).
Due to these reasons (and also, subjectively, because I have learned to tell when the male is barking at me and when the barking is not directed at me but rather at his social group), I think that the male is warning the female (females) of potential threat.
I believe that the male takes this task quite seriously.
I base it on two observations where the male noticed me while feeding.
Usually in similar situations (due to distance and habituation to humans), the roe deer are not particularly concerned with humans and they keep feeding unless the human walks up closer – too close for comfort (which I do not).
But on these two occasions, the roe deer male raised his head, looked at me, then lowered it again to take another bite and then seemed to make the decision to stop feeding and to run and warn the female (females).
The roe deer male ran from an optimal feeding situation (which he would not have normally abandoned due to the minor disturbance caused by me) to a suboptimal feeding situation or a situation that offers no foraging at all which suggests that he selected mate-protecting (warning) over foraging.
However, I also suppose that the behaviour might be exacerbated by some change in hormonal state related to the beginning of territorial period in the male roe deer’s annual cycle.
The reaction might be different from that during other months simply because the roe deer males are altogether more alert and defensive.
2.
There have been two situations where I have observed the following –
Both situations occurred by the river in a place where visibility is low due to thick shrubs and dense (shadowy) canopies which is why I cannot make these claims with 100% certainty.
In one situation I met two roe deer. One was larger and the other was smaller. This was in early June.
Both deer reacted differently. The smaller one froze and I vaguely noticed that it was a female and she appeared heavily pregnant.
She probably determined her chances were better if she tried to stay unnoticed rather than if she tried to outrun the danger.
Meanwhile, the larger deer (and I did not have enough time, nor visibility was sufficient to surely determine the gender) ran away toward a small riparian meadow.
When the larger deer had reached the meadow, he(she) barked very loudly and repeatedly.
What struck me as strange was the general manner in which the larger deer fled.
Usually they leap off very gracefully and in about 20 seconds it is almost impossible to tell where they went.
This time, the larger deer seemed to struggle through the shrubs stepping on all the dry branches and also gave way his location by barking many times.
I cannot say if there was not another deer over there (if this, too, was a warning bark meant for the other deer).
But it truly seemed to me that the larger deer was purposefully trying to entice me to follow it and to draw attention away from the female who had chosen to remain still and invisible – also, slightly toward the opposite direction of where the larger deer had fled to.
I have met so many roe deer during my walks (surely they could be numbered in hundreds if counted each time individually) and never had I met one which created that much noise while fleeing.
There is a slight possibility that if the larger deer was female, as well, she, too, was pregnant and thus more ‘awkward’ in her movements.
The terrain was not in any way different from most of the landscape, either.
Also, the deer seemed to rather advertise its new location by barking than to conceal it (of course, it was possible that the deer was advertising its location not to me but to the smaller deer which remained behind).
This is quite hard to substantiate but usually, when the roe deer run away and bark, the vocalization seems different – it is not easy to determine precisely where it came from.
On this occasion, I could pinpoint quite exactly where the roe deer that fled was waiting. If I had been interested, I would have had no trouble finding it (which I did not).
This made me suspect that the larger deer might have been a male who was luring me away from the female to give her a chance.
I do not assume (on occasion that it was a distraction to divert my attention from the hiding female) that it was another female because she, too, would have been pregnant (or with a fawn/fawns) at the time. She would unlikely have taken such a risk.
But if it was a male and if it was mate-protecting behaviour, this would indicate a very high level of investment because such behaviour might lead to the depredation of the individual (male) as a result of luring the predator (me) away from the female.
The other case was similar but I also managed to notice that the individual running away was a male.
This was already later in June when fawns would probably be present and hidden away quite further from where I saw the deer (because I made this observation on a regular trail while I believe that the fawns are born closer to the river where the riparian vegetation is dense).
The female, this time, also fled but she took another direction than the male.
From the riparian deer tracks, I think she went in the direction where the fawn was waiting because the deer prints that I observed on other days mostly came from that direction and then looped through the forest back to it.
Meanwhile, the male fled in the opposite direction, once again, creating quite a lot of noise and barking.
———————
I would be very interested to learn whether roe deer males might invest themselves in such manner during the period when their mates (females) are not guarded against other males but against, e.g., predators or disturbance.
Perhaps my interpretations are wrong and this has been simply territorial behaviour or heightened reaction behaviour due to some hormonal issues.
But if they are not, it would suggest higher parental investment on behalf of the roe deer males.
In fact, it could be the other way around – that the ‘parental hormones’ might cause the roe deer bucks to invest in territorial behaviour which has been described in scientific literature as based on mate-guarding intentions.
Meanwhile, the actual rut begins rather later in summer while the buck holds its territory against other males from about April already.
(Although, being sedentary, the females are unlikely to move and, in some respects, by protecting the female along with the territory, could additionally ensure the female’s ‘quality’, namely, access to high quality, abundant resources by the female which are not depleted by great numbers of migratory or residential males.)
However, I would like to entertain the idea that the changes in the female’s hormonal state close to parturition might excite parental instincts in the buck which result both in territorial behaviour as well as mate-guarding behaviour with respect not to competitors but predators.
I also often notice the bucks travelling together with the female (females) and the fawn (fawns) when the fawn (fawns) has (have) become mobile.
Around here, they seem to form small family groups (male + female + young) during spring – summer although not at all times.
***
I have extended my theory due to several observations in July when roe deer males appear to be feeding and travelling alongside females that are slightly smaller than adults and that are perhaps does born last spring (potentially, daughters but perhaps unrelated to the buck).
These smaller females are far more anxious than adult females and upon seeing me and my dog, they bolt almost at once.
But far less frequently so when with a male.
It appears that they draw confidence from the presence of the male although this might be explained not by active defense on behalf of the male against predators (us) but rather by observing the male’s peaceful reactions to us (the males seem the least perturbed during these chance encounters).
I often see the smaller (subadult?) females seeking the company of male or older female.
On two occasions this summer, these females (which when encountered in solitary situations, always flee without much hesitation) alongside older female or a buck reconsider their strategy and pay a greater due to observation and their natural curiosity.
However, although I cannot quantify these reactions, it appears to me that they are more confident in male presence than in older female presence.
The older female has higher stakes (she is possibly a mother and therefore more vigilant and less calm than the male as well as unlikely to defend the younger female if it were necessary and if bucks, indeed, ever did so).
While with both older female or male, the young doe seems to wish to leave but then she stays to observe us when the other individual does not follow her lead.
However, with the female she performs the observation from a greater distance and does not reduce her rate of vigilance while with the male she sometimes even keeps feeding and allows a far closer approach (we do not approach but the distance between us and the deer are smaller due to reasons like infrastructure and encounter conditions).
With the female, both females retreat some distance and then stop upon the decision of the older individual.
With the male, they do not retreat and the male can even make a step in our direction.
This, of course, does not constitute proof but it makes me believe, personally, that the young female relies on the buck for predator defense while with the older female she follows her reactions and perhaps considers the risk dispersal scenario where two individual group divides the total predation risk by half.
***
Another observation on 8th July.
It was early in the morning (around 5 am) and I was walking along a path (with my dog) that leads along a property.
The property has extensive lawns on which often roe deer graze.
There is a riparian forest on one side (to the right from us) and other patchy habitats where the roe deer probably rest, raise their young and escape to.
This morning, as well, I saw three deer on the lawn.
One of them was spring fawn which was already rather large – perhaps half the size of the female that was there.
The fawn was grazing near a female and a male.
I stopped briefly just to make sure I was truly seeing a fawn because fawns are rarely observed.
When we stopped, the deer started organizing for escape (which normally would not occur with such a distance between us in our peri-urban landscape but the fawn… panicked).
To my confusion, the two adult deer moved away from us but the fawn was running straight at us.
Its trajectory was aimed right at where we were standing.
My dog is not aggressive and I was not concerned regarding the fawn’s safety but this decision seemed to startle all of us (except the fawn who appeared very determined).
Firstly, the fawn did not exhibit any association with the two adults.
It was not looking for their reaction, not following their lead, not seeking their proximity.
Instead it appeared that the fawn was making for the safe habitat that he knew – which I assume was its home (where it had been born and spent the early week(s) of life) across the very shallow river (in the riparian forest).
About 3 metres from us, the fawn turned to its left (to our right) and ran toward the river.
I do not really understand why the fawn had to approach us so closely because the river can be crossed essentially in all places in July but it is possible that the fawn used some route that was more customary and that the fawn had securely and successfully used many times.
The doe was perplexed and simply stood where she had been at the moment when the movement began.
The buck, meanwhile, ran after the fawn and the following observation will be based on my subjective impressions of the speed, direction and body language of the buck.
My conclusion was that the buck was trying to prevent the fawn from running into us or at least attempting to somehow guide its direction in a protective manner.
The conclusion is based on the fact that it would have been easier for the buck to simply retreat as he did later alongside the doe when the fawn had decidedly disappeared down the slope by the river.
It was dangerous for the buck to run toward us and he seemed to be running to herd the fawn and to perhaps change its mind on a safer and more distant fleeing route.
It might be argued that the buck was not herding the (confused and misguided) fawn away from us but toward us with the purpose of offering it to us ‘as bait’ so that we chased the fawn (the weaker individual) and not the buck himself and the doe.
However, it did not seem plausible because, as mentioned before, the buck was initially some 40 metres away from us while the fawn had approached us by 10 – 5 metres at the time.
If we were predators, we would have likely gone after the fawn anyway without any further ‘encouragement’.
It was not a very sound strategy to ensure one’s escape by leaving the safer distance and abandoning the headstart and nearing in on us at 10 metres.
On a similar note, the fawn actually slightly altered its course upon the buck’s intervention turning for the river.
It was likely that it would have come even closer to us otherwise.
The buck did not herd it toward us but distracted the fawn from nearing in on us and caused its trajectory to move away from us.
Also, there was no aggression in the buck’s body language.
Chasing behaviour would have been ‘pushier’ and more ‘hostile’ manifesting a certain level of determination and will in the frontal part of the body.
But the buck was just mostly confused and I was not even convinced he had figured out what course to take if the fawn listened to his guidance.
When the fawn had disappeared, the buck joined the doe and they fled in another direction.
The doe was not exhibiting maternal investment in this fawn and she was securing her own position and I thought that this meant – it was not her fawn but she might have a fawn elsewhere.
The roe deer density is not overly high but more than one doe can often be found on the same range and even feeding together.
It is very possible that two breeding does would live nearby and that perhaps the fawn had briefly joined the deer that it had met during its mother’s absence as the fawn had wandered out of its core habitat in the forest.
Which is to say, the doe might not have been related to the fawn (or she might have been the fawn’s aunt or grandmother which could have explain the fawn’s readiness to graze with a ‘group of strangers’), and she might have had a fawn of her own which was why she was not acting protective (she could not afford taking risk).
Meanwhile, the buck could have been the fawn’s father.
Personally, I believe this incident attested to paternal and protective / guiding behaviour on behalf of the buck who appeared as startled over the fawn’s sudden running toward us – as we were.
I think the buck was trying to herd the fawn but not in order to give it up as ‘bait’ but in order to ensure its safe escape.
Notes by Ieva 