Trailing wildlife with the camera is a game of sorts, but it is a game that comes with unique rules about how to treat your fellow "players" Parks Canada have a motto that if you make an animal change its behaviour, you're too close, which is a fine rule-of-thumb, but sometimes the best way to prevent disturbance isn't obvious.
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Autumn is coming. A paintbox of fungi colours is emerging all over the woodland floor, the blackberries are ripe, and the squirrels and birds are increasing their activity. In the meadows, horses wearing warm coats are lit by the first rays of the dawn sun



This morning, further away from the houses, I found a fine-looking roe deer illuminated by that early light.



He evidently knew where he was going - out of the field I was not in his flight path, so I continued down the track towards the farm.



But he soon reappeared. He seemed to be unable to squeeze through the wire fence...



...and trotted down the field towards the track - towards me.



There is another barbed wire fence that runs alongside the track. I've seen deer vault this fence before, but he seemed unwilling to do so, and doubled back on himself. Up and down he went, trotting closer and closer to me. I've very rarely been so near to a wild roebuck. His desire to escape from the field emboldened him, but he still would not actually cross my path.



At this point, it belatedly dawned on me that I was playing chess with this deer I moved, he moved; he was on the defensive, strategically attempting to evade me. I had no intention of confining him to a corner of the "board".



It was rather a tricky one Continuing up the track to the farm was the obvious solution - getting myself completely away from the meadow would allow him to exit it at any site he deemed suitable. But doing so would put me adjacent to the lowest fence for some time.

So I went the other way, directly towards the deer! He immediately retreated to the top of the field, and then, finding his escape route towards the farm vacant, sped away from me and out to freedom!



An honourably drawn game - I got my photos, and he figured out how to defeat the fence!

I watched this small, finely-boned fox as he loped through the waving grasses as the sky pinkened with impending dusk. I've seen him before; he has a brush that is heavily banded with darker rings of brown, almost like a paler version of a wildcat's tail. He is not a nervous fox, and in any case seemed preoccupied by the wind. Gradually he loped closer and closer, slipping silently through the fence and out onto the verge - then realising, in an instant, just how close to me he had come. I took a couple of photos, and then he turned about and raced off through the meadow.


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Further down the road, two much larger shadows were tiptoeing towards me. A roe deer and her fawn! By this stage dusk had fairly closed upon the lane, and this photo is at the absolute limit of what is possible with my DSLR without a flash or tripod in the dark.



Isn't she beautiful!

Resting seems a popular activity for foxes in these days of summer. The grass is still high around the fringes of the fields, but it is now mown in many of the meadows. Foxes, forever creatures of edges, curl up in tight balls where tall and cut grasses meet.

Tonight, I found a large, weary-looking fox on just such an edge.



His muzzle is a riddle of scars. He could surely tell a few stories



The vast majority of fox fights are loud but almost bloodless; the most common injury seems to be sprained leg muscles, the result of one protagonist toppling a rival down to the ground. More serious battles do occur, of course, but I've never witnessed one.

Bites were also in evidence in one of the paddocks this evening - though, in this case, it was mutual grooming.



Walking back down the lane, I found my path blocked by two adult roe deer It was one of those strange moments that is both a blessing and a nightmare to a photographer - my reactions had to be almost instananeous



The buck's antlers are completely free of velvet, the temporary, blood-rich skin that grows over the antler bone and is shed before the rut. As it happens, roe deer rut very early - right about now, in fact - and I doubt it was a concidence that he was with a doe. His antlers are rather crooked, however.



I watched them for a while as they tip-toed silently through the grasses, munching a little, and then entering the copse. The doe emerged from the far side a few minutes later, but I did not attempt to obtain more photos of her. My camera's last action for the evening was concerned with a slender young dogfox, who was exploring his own part of the lane in the swiftly gathering dusk