This autumn a few red deer stags (2 – 3) have crossed the highway that separates the town and the countryside and their mating calls are heard in the forest patches on the town’s border.
I believe this has not happened before and the causes could be related to extensive and intensive deforestation in the countryside as well as growth in the red deer population.
Ordinarily, only a few red deer (mainly a small group of females or young stags) could be observed near the town but not on this side of the highway (they could be observed on the other side of the town, across the river and they, too, appeared not to cross the river just like the red deer on the opposite side did not use to cross the highway).
Two of the stags, judging by the pitch of their roars, are younger and they have probably been pushed out from the more optimal habitats by dominating stags.
One stag, however, sounds older and he frequents an area between the highway and the river where there is a livestock operation.
These cattle are roaming freely in the landscape between the river and the highway.
However, I am not certain if they are constrained at night.
They can be heard very early in the morning and sometimes they are observed around dawn close to the park area.
At least, in summer they likely roam free at night, as well, but I am less certain about the autumn.
These livestock herds consist mainly of cows and calves but there are also several bulls and the bulls tend to bellow loud in the mornings and sometimes during day.
Their bellowing used to be shorter – separate bouts of bellows that are not very continuous (two or three calls separated by longer periods of silence).
Yesterday I heard a bull bellowing in a manner which was different to that I had heard before.
It was more similar to the red deer stag’s rut calling – repeated roars (in the bull’s case, bellows) over a long period of time (in the bull’s case, several minutes, perhaps even 5 minutes).
This happened right after the bull had been exposed to the red deer stag’s roaring over the past week or two weeks.
Previously, I had never heard the livestock bull bellowing with such prolonged intensity.
It appeared that the bull was imitating the stag for his own purposes.
I am not certain when reproduction happens in such semi-wild livestock herds because reproductive cycles have been disrupted in livestock and many operations inseminate cows artificially.
If gestation in cows last for about 9 months and many livestock producers opt for spring calving, late summer and autumn could be the time when breeding-related activities are encouraged (in this herd, calves are, indeed, mostly observed in spring).
Thus, the bellowing in the bull could bear reproductive signalling (just like in the stag).
Also, territoriality could be involved, including territoriality toward the red deer stag himself.
I think that stags did not use to occur in the livestock range before this autumn and this might be the first year the livestock experiences the red deer rut on their land.
At least the dogs in that area seem to react very actively to the red deer stag bugling while the dogs on the other side of the town (where red deer have been observed more often closer to the town) do not bark at all when the stag is roaring.
But the dogs were acquired by the people inhabiting the livestock range relatively recently and the dogs could be less familiar with the local wildlife than the dogs on the side of the town that is more ‘country’ than it is peri-urban.
While in semi-natural habitats livestock probably do not care much about red deer affairs, these bulls and cows might feel threatened by the novel and large visitors to their range, and the intensity in bellowing by the bull could reflect their confusion and territoriality.
Whatever the motivation, it appears that the bull has partly appropriated the vocalization from the stag because, over the past 5 – 7 years, I had not once heard any of the bulls in that particular heard making such long vocalizations.
I find this very curious and I wish I could make closer observations to attempt to determine the context in which the bull is using the bellow-bouts (reproductive, territorial (range-wise) or territorial (cow-defense)).
Notes by Ieva 