UK Wildlife Blog

You can see canary wharf/the Isle of Dogs and the old Battersea power station (the white chimneys) in the background, behind this hind (female).

The other 350 of the deer are fallow deer (Dama dama). We came across a group just down the road from the red deer. This fallow buck (male) was browsing the bracken

mean while, the rest of the herd of bucks sat down and had a rest.
You can see how close they are to the busy here Thankfully most of the drivers are sensible and slow down, many wanting a good look at these remarkable creatures anyway. The traffic is warned to be careful when approaching deer as they can accelarate pretty fast and run across the road when spooked, and be hard to see in poor light at dusk.

The herd started to stand after a dog appearedThankfully the cars were moving slowly nearby, as I was worried they might be spooked. While the deers can be remarkably tame where humans are concerned, they still get spooked easily by dogs, with good reason. Dogs kill many young fawns and calves every year, chase pregnant hinds and does (female fallow deer) and sometimes kill older deer. They also cause many car accident by chasing the deer across the road. Dog owners are asked to control there dogs and keep them under control, as no dog can be fully trusted. But many, if not most, in my experience, unfortunately seem to ignore this advice. Bold notices are put up in rutting season and yet last year Is aw a dog run towards a male gaurding his females in the middle of rutting season and actually closed my eyes, but one grunt and the dog retreated. Having seen a red deer charge the fence at Bedfords Park at a dog, a dread to think what would have happend to the dog, and wonder if dog ownwers would pay more attention if they realised the danger to there pet, even if they don't care about the deer.

I then saw a largish herd of red deer a few hundred metres away and then to my horror a family with 2 dogs off the lead heading right for them. Thankfully the dogs were well trained (I still think they should have been on a lead) although they did run towards the deer a couple of times, but not too near to them. The herd understandably decided to move offIf you look you can see lots of calves within this group of hinds and young stags. here are a hind and stag on there own yesterdays preview photo was also from this group.

The herd ended up sheltering under a tree

There was another small group of fallows by the rugby field (someone else was in camo and photographing them, so we left him to it) but no sign of the massive 200+ herd I had seen on previous visits. There were a number of deer scattered across the park, including this one (with a couple of others) infront of The White Lodge

There was also another small herd of red deer not far from the Isabella Plantation

With Richmond Park being an artificially created environment, human intervention is necessary to keep the park and its animals healthy. This involves the feeding deers nuts, maize and hay in winter months, although the deer get most of there food from the plants in the park, so visitors are asked to not take too many chestnuts, acorns etc. so the deer have some thing to eat!
Tress have to be protected for up to 50 years from damaged by the deer by grazing and bark striping. In fgact Richmond park displays a classic sign of the presence of deer: all the trees have no leaves below the maximum reach of the deer (about 1.5m), or the 'browse line' as it is known.
The least popular and unfortunately necessary form of intervention, is culling. Due to the fact that there are now no natural predators since man wiped out the wolves, lynxes and bears, deer across the UK, deer have to have their numbers controlled by culling. This is even more important in an enclosed area like Richmond park, where overpopulation would quickly cause damage to the forest and the animals that depend on it and eventually lead to starvation among the deer themselves. The culling takes place after dark in the males in February and in the females in November.
Many of the above indicated problems have lead to some people saying the deer should be removed from the park. But in a time where many children, especially those in cities like London, have had little or no contact or understanding of nature, the importance of the contacts they have with the deer in this park far out weigh the problems in my opinion.

All this infomation and more can be found in the "Deer of Richmond Park" leaflet available from the visitor centre and from the website here