As we (my dog and I) were almost about to start heading back home, we encountered two roe deer foraging in adjacent half-abandoned private garden plots.
These were local residents, a male and a female.
The female looks rather young and she is very similar to the male in her appearance (they are both extraordinarily beautiful individuals with almost hazelly fur and very clear, ‘darkly delineated’ facial features). She is also small in size and, last year, in this very male’s territory a fawn was observed who was tinier than most fawns.
Thusly, I assume that the female is the male’s daughter and there is also another female paired with this male (mother to the young female) and the breeding female’s this year’s fawn but these particular individuals are keeping close to the river.
That morning, I had spotted the young female in the area about an hour earlier.
I believe she had been foraging there and the male later joined her.
They had apparently not arrived together because the male was, in fact, foraging on the other side of a wire fence.
Namely, they were browsing on adjacent plots (the female had access to a shrubbier plot while the male was foraging on a plot covered with vegetation somewhere between the lawn phase and the grassland phase) but these plots were separated by a fence.
The fence ran parallel to the road we were taking, and we were on the female’s side of the fence.
It was slightly past sunrise, the the air was filled with a light which enhanced the concealment of the roe deer.
As a result, we did not notice them until we were almost side by side with them.
We all paused, a bit unsure, but the roe deer recognized us. At least, the female did.
However, the female was mere metres from us, and she thought it wiser to get some distance between us.
Accordingly, she leaped off into the shrubs, in the direction which we had intended to take.
This was also the direction leading away from the riparian area which is the family’s range.
The male, meanwhile, might have had a harder time identifying us because the sun was shining right into his face.
The male also made a move forward, in the opposite direction than the female.
They each took the only direction available to them considering the fencing arrangement and our position on the road.
The male stopped on another road (the roads in the allotment area form a grid pattern) and there were mere metres (3 – 4) between him and the haven, i.e., the riparian forest.
However, he did not bounce off and, instead, he was standing there looking intently at us.
Even if the buck did recognize us, this male seems very protective and he arrives to investigate alarm calls (barks) by his family’s females as well as appears to be close at hand at all times near the fawning site.
The male’s intent stare felt a bit like conscience embodied, and I felt badly to ‘go after’ the female.
Of course, ‘going after’ would not have entitled chasing her but we had been headed in that direction and I was in a bit of a hurry to return back home.
I made a few disobedient steps forward but I was, once more, stopped by the male’s stare in my back.
Quite often, a male would perhaps bark and follow the female to safety (keeping side by side with her) or he would bark and make a fuss so that we chose to pursue him instead.
On this occasion, such strategy would probably not have worked well for several reasons:
1
The male could not follow the female instantly because there was a fence separating them and he would have had to walk past us to reach her in the first place.
2
The male was on the other side of a fence and the fence was pretty long.
If we were predators, we would not have chosen to go after the male no matter how much noise he made because it would take a lot of time to reach even the spot where he was standing at the moment while the female could not have gone far and there were no fences between us.
While we would have gotten to even the road he was standing on, the female would have gone and the male would have had enough time to vanish into the forest, as well.
NB – the roe deer male appeared to assume that we are familiar with the barriers that fences pose which is flattering, of course, regarding our intellectual capabilities;
3
It is very possible that the female had escaped into an area which borders the neighbouring male’s territory and if we were to pursue her, she might have been forced to take shelter in the neighbouring pair’s forest (on the opposite side of the private garden allotment area from her own home).
It is likely that the neighbours would not have minded her much because she is a female and they have probably met her during winter.
Meanwhile, a territorial male might not be able to afford such escapes into another territorial male’s range.
I am not certain where the exact borders between the ranges lie but I am aware that this territorial male mostly spends his time in the orchards, the riparian area and even across the river – quite far from where we met him.
(In fact, I believe this male comes from the roe deer population from the opposite side of the river because he is of the same colour while the ‘locals’ are far darker brown and he also crosses the river often and apparently utilizes some areas on the other shore.)
I find it difficult to imagine that his territory could be any larger (including areas into which the young female had run off).
It was possible that they were already foraging in an outermost zone of their home, and it would have been improper for the male to advance any further (while the female could have afforded a slight trespass).
Perhaps if the male ran along with the female and they both ended up in the neighbours’ territory, the female, too, could have gotten into trouble while, on her own, she might have been given temporary haven.
***
Accordingly, the male had very few options to be of assistance to this young female, and the usual strategies would not have worked.
Instead, the male positioned himself well in our sight (although he could have been long gone to safety) and he sort of stared us into a polite submission.
It truly worked as I sighed and walked back to take the longer route.
However, it made me wonder about certain aspects of roe deer physiology and communication.
Firstly, I believe that vision is far more important in the roe deer species than in many other deer species (see, e.g., Roe deer observation (Mar 16, 2024) – fawn still seeking mother’s guidance, Roe deer observation – meeting familiar individuals after brief separation).
Roe deer are probably often watching their predators or other disturbance agents walking by as the roe deer strategy is frequently that of standing very still, (successfully) pretending to be invisible and letting the danger pass by (which, in my view, is highly stressful and calls for enormous courage).
If roe deer use vision in intraspecific communication and they also follow with their eyes any passing dangers, they must have evolved an ability to change focus so that, in some situations (communication with kin or group), the eyesight is deliberate, intent and draws attention while, in other situations, it is as inconspicuous as their entire body posture.
Many species seem to have this ability to tell when they are being watched.
Watching someone very intently while trying to avoid being noticed by this someone, could be ‘a tricky business’ and perhaps, under such circumstances, the roe deer individual does not look at the passing by subject directly or somehow ‘diffuses’ the focus of the stare so that the threatening subject did not suspect they were being watched.
In our situation, the roe deer male was clearly watching is very intently and intensely. I wonder if this particular communicative stare could be used in other contexts among roe deer themselves.
The stare did not feel provocative but it could have originated in some of male-male competitive displays (which shows how incredibly courageous and devoted the buck was to defend his daughter as he, essentially, might have been challenging us to a fight).
There could be other contexts within which the roe deer have evolved such capability to focus their eyesight in order to communicate, e.g., social intent.
I am mentioning this because roe deer, especially, such riparian roe deer who mostly dwell in the forest, are not considered a highly social species but the ability to focus one’s stare in order to communicate a message is very suggestive of subtle social behaviour.
I do not suppose that the ‘eye-to-eye communication’ is limited to male competition, either.
Males already have other methods of display and they might relatively rarely come into contact close enough to actually stare one another down or provoke one another by staring.
Accordingly, I expect that vision is an important communication channel in the family and perhaps also in the winter group.
Perhaps the male was not as much provoking us as he was attempting to dominate us so that we followed his purpose.
Maybe such communication is used in order to lead other group members to foraging patches or away from danger etc.
Interestingly, if the male was using a strategy that he applies to lead other group members to foraging patches while considering us predators, the male might have suggested we rather preyed on him than the female.
I believe eyesight would be an important communicative tool for a cryptic species which tries to avoid being noticed.
For example, in conditions of alarm, it would be beneficial to understand the other individual’s strategy via making mere eye contact vs. via moving around and using other, more conspicuous methods of communication.
Similarly, a mother might warn her fawn not to move or indicate that soon they should run via making eye contact.
In forest environment, eyesight is often thought of as ineffective because once you see someone, you are already in close contact with them and eyesight is not the best tool to, for example, locate someone.
However, in such habitats, most communication also happens at close quarters and the space itself can be clumped and limited for any boisterous movements.
In my experience, roe deer communication and social communication is based on individual recognition not only within family but within the local population.
I think that the engagement of visual communication is an important part to this recognition and that the male’s capability to communicate via his stare suggests of a highly social species.
Notes by Ieva 