This morning I was ‘fortunate’ (I am not certain it is a proper adjective to describe an even of strife) to overhear a territorial conflict between two roe deer males.
I overheard the conflict rather than observed it because:
- it occurred across the river and slightly upstream where it would have been impossible for me to sneak up for an observation at the time anyway;
- it was quite dark and I could not even discern much in front of me on the opposite bank, not to mention activity many metres further along.
At first, I did not invest myself in the event because I thought it was a territorial male strutting around and barking as they sometimes tend to do in April- May without any contestant in sight.
Also, nobody else by the river was paying attention to this incident.
There was a beaver peacefully cutting down shrubs a tiny bit upslope on the opposite bank.
There were smaller fishes jumping in the river.
There was our mystery animal rustling across the stream.
I cannot identify it by the sound alone but it must of the size of a mustelid and it seems to be shuffling through the vegetation of brush and long grasses without giving chase to prey.
I do not suppose it is a mink because the animal has never emerged from water, nor it has later dived back into water.
It makes no vocalizations and therefore I do not believe it is a badger because badgers can be rather loud, especially, at this time of year.
Everyone was going about their business, and there was the nice, mundane ‘office/kitchen’ feeling to the whole scene.
The barking buck was tearing through some undergrowth (however, it was not running), sort of headed toward us and then retreating back again, and I merely paid him a thought wishing he would end up closer to where we (my dog and I) were sitting because a large animal like that I might be able to spot against the background of the slope where grassy area cuts through two patches of brush.
Then (only perhaps a couple of minutes had passed) I heard what I thought was a small-sized/medium-sized dog barking.
I am very familiar with roe deer barking but this particular bark confused me greatly because it did not resemble the roe buck barking audial quality.
It was sharper, higher-pitched not as resonant.
I was quite aware there could not have been dogs around there so I assumed it had to be the roe deer buck.
At that moment, I believed it was the same buck who had changed his intonation.
However, after a minute, I heard two individuals barking and one of them had the sonorous, resonant bark while the other barked more sharply (but its bark had acquired also more of the full-bodied quality).
I became annoyed with myself because I had not been paying enough attention to detail in order to determine where each of the bucks had been located.
Both males were on the other side of the river and not very far from our sitting spot.
I suppose that the shrill quality to the bark of the other male was not the feature of his individual voice (at the same time, I think that the male might have a vocal pattern that is different from that of an average male).
On this occasion, the sharper barking must have been the means to convey a different type of message and perhaps I had not associated such sharp barks with roe deer because I had never witnessed a roe deer buck in a situation where he was actually confronted by another buck.
Namely, the first buck was barking in the same ringing, resonant manner that patrolling bucks typically are heard to produce.
The second buck might have been discovered by the first buck and his vocalization would have been the response to the threat by the territorial male rather than an expression of his own territoriality.
It could have been defensive in nature.
This interpretation sounds good enough until I try to spatially map out the incident.
The first buck had been walking along the bank in the riparian forest, coming quite close to us, barking in the fashion characteristic to patrolling, territory-ownership ascertaining males.
While the following act in the drama is somewhat obscure (not merely due to the dim light but also because I was not paying close attention), it seems that upon treading back, he had stumbled upon the other male who then reacted by admitting his presence and professing willingness to stand up for himself.
I do not believe that it was the other way around and that the shrill-barking male had discovered the sonorous-barking male because it appeared that the latter had been searching for intruders and it appeared that the former had been perhaps hiding (his presence had not been given away by any vocalization or sound such as snapping of twigs under his hoofs etc. and I had assumed there was only the one male).
Then their positions changed and the sharp-barking male was closer to us while the orotund-barking male had retreated quite farther upstream.
They were still barking at one another albeit from a distance of at least 50 metres.
At no point did they establish physical contact (at least I heard nothing suggestive of such confrontation) and I am not even certain they ever approached one another closely.
The whole contest was resolved through barking.
I suppose that the resonant-sounding buck had returned to his territory but he was still ensuring against the intruder’s further advances.
It might be that the sharper-sounding buck had also relocated back to his own range (which was then near us) and once he was in his territory, his bark also resumed the territorial quality (rather than defensive quality).
If that is so, I have seen the male who lives around there and he is not young, nor small. He is a mature buck who might even be of above average age (5 years or so).
I cannot remember if I have heard him barking but the higher-pitched, shrill quality of his bark in this incident could not have been the consequence of his age, inexperience, body size etc.
Of course, there is the possibility that the intruder was not a territorial buck at all and he was roaming over other males’ territories.
As I am not overly familiar with differences between sundry roe deer male vocalizations, the intruder might not have regained the ringing quality to the vocalization due to having returned to his territory (but due to some other reason such as feeling safe once more, having averted an actual physical confrontation).
The circumstance which confuses me (whereby I am not certain which scenario was the more probable) is that the supposedly territorial buck had approached us about as closely as later the putative intruder did.
Thus, I cannot figure out whose territory they were on when they had arrived as closely to us as possible.
The territorial male seemed to have been searching for the suspected trespasser but then it must have been his own range he was patrolling.
The conflict was, however, ended once the territorial male had retreated deeper into his territory upstream (farther from us) and the intruder had remained close to us (approximately where the territorial male had been searching for him).
The intruder was discovered perhaps 50 – 100 metres (from the furthest point the territorial buck reached in our direction) back into the territorial male’s range and then he travelled this distance (in our direction) to remove himself from the other buck’s range.
If the territorial buck was contented with such behaviour by his rival (and he, indeed, seemed content as he eventually withdrew and both males ceased barking), did it suffice that he had pushed the intruder out to the very edge of his own territory or had he crossed his range borders looking for the other male whose presence he perhaps smelled?
And if so, was he himself trespassing, paradoxically, while patrolling his own territory? 🙂
The putative intruder never passed by us and there is not much habitat for the roe deer downstream from where we were sitting.
I suspect that perhaps the intruding male might have been either from this side of the river (I did not hear him cross, however, but I am not sure how deep the water is where he was standing – he might have crossed very quietly) or he might have been from a range that lies further from the river, inland.
Thus, he might have first retreated sufficiently far from the core range of the other male and then he might have travelled to his own range.
The territorial buck might have been waiting nearby enough to listen in whether the intruder had moved out of his territory entirely.
The sonorous quality that the intruder’s sharper barks reclaimed, however, suggests that his territory was nearby and he was becoming more confident when he was in it or close to it.
I am not certain why a territorial male would trespass into another male’s territory now that territoriality has been clearly resumed but mating is still long ahead (at least 4 – 5 months).
A non-territorial male would be likelier to trespass during migration or because they have to forage somewhere and currently every patch of land is ‘someone’s place’.
The ranges are very similar in resources and I would not assume that a neighbour would have an actual metabolic need to trespass.
As I have stated before, my interpretation of the sonorous, ringing quality to the bark as ‘territorial barking’ could be wrong and the intruder might not have resumed it due to having returned on his own range.
But I cannot dismiss this ‘hunch’ that he had, and if so, I am very curious what other motivation bucks have for trespassing during this time of territory re-establishment when mates are not being sought for and resources are not needed.
On one hand, I am not very familiar with the habitats across the river.
While they are superficially similar, presently, the forage availability might be rather heterogeneous as in some places vegetation has started resprouting and in other places it has not yet.
On this side of the river, overgrown hay meadows and dense riparian forests predominate but the private garden allotments have not been sown and worked.
On the other side of the river, there are pastures and some semi-open birch groves.
Due to the grazing and the openness of the birch patches, spring vegetation could have pushed out already.
This might be alluring enough although the range on this side of the river is certainly not famishing anybody, either.
Another interpretation that I had relates to the winter associations among the roe deer.
The roe deer, during winter, might have met other individuals more frequently whom they do not meet anymore because of the resumed territoriality (this concerns males who cannot travel into other males’ territories to meet up with females… or males whom they might have befriended during winter).
In this riparian forest habitat, travelling is easier during winter as the canopies intercept some of the snow (compared to the open and semi-open habitats across the river), and this was a snowy winter.
This particular subpopulation sometimes even tends to travel in larger herds during winter led by a buck (at least the buck is typically at the front of the line of the deer passing through the bands of forest along the river where trails are narrow and fanning out is impossible).
I wonder if some of the females from across the river might have joined this herd during the snowy months to travel with more ease.
Perhaps the male from this side of the river simply misses them now that they have returned to their side of the river (where he is excluded because the territory belongs to another male).
These females would not cross the river presently because their range is better at the moment than the ranges on this side of the river.
I have seen close associations between roe deer males and young females or perhaps barren females during early summer/summer way before the mating season.
They seem to have bonded and the female often looked to the male for support or guidance (especially, if she seemed younger).
These riparian deer might form groups that become more or less closely bonded, and the sudden disruption of such associations might be psychologically difficult for the male who perhaps has led the group over several months.
In other years the dissolution of the groups and associations might have been more gradual while this year, February was cold and snowy and March was warm and springlike.
It was almost as if the weather jumped from February to end of April/early May skipping the climatic conditions characteristic to March altogether.
A whole month of social acclimatization might have been thereby skipped, as well.
If the buck in question was the older buck I had observed, he might certainly have acted as a patriarch using his experience to take care of his winter group.
The male might still be feeling responsible over the individuals who belonged in his winter group and the resumed sense of territoriality might psychologically blend with the attitudes of protectiveness (especially, over females even if these females no longer live on his range).
Experience also could have increased his foraging efficiency and reduced other metabolic expenses providing him with more opportunity to socialize.
It is a lovely thought that this male might have trespassed in order to visit his winter friends and protégés.
Perhaps the confrontation between these two males did not escalate into a battle because they also knew one another.
The territorial male might have not given a hot chase ensuring that the intruder was far out from his range because he knew where the intruder had come from and he was contented enough to listen in on whether the other male had returned to his own range.
He was not expecting for the intruder to flee over hills and far away because he knew that the intruder was a neighbour.
I am not certain which scenario is likelier (the intruder was a neighbour vs. the intruder was a migrant) and hereby I have offered both.
When it was all over, the beaver was still munching and the mystery animal was still shuffling as if nothing big had happened.
Perhaps it is an indication that nothing big had happened, verily.
On one hand, beavers and mystery animals (mustelids?) might not invest themselves into the drama of roe deer battles.
On the other hand, they might have recognized, by the quality of the vocalizations, that there was never any true aggression and it was simply an act of reestablishing social boundaries according to the seasonal standards of polite behaviour.
Notes by Ieva 