Right place, right time

There are precious few places in the world where you can be standing on your back door step at 10 o'clock at night, letting your dogs out for their last sniff round the garden and listening to red stags roaring in the hills all around you. Since I'm lucky enough to live in one of them and I happened to be awake at half past six this morning, I thought I'd jump in the car and drive the big square from home to Tongue to Altnaharra to Syre to Kinbrace to Melvich to home again in search of deer.

I must have seen about 300.

Unfortunately many of them were at that time where it's dark enough for them to still be feeling comfortable near the road, but not quite light enough for the camera to get decent results. Still, by 9am the shots were getting acceptable:







Remember this guy? Look at the last but one photo in this post and then compare - I think it's the same stag and that missing antler is just the way it grows each year.



And then I found this chap, with a herd of 12 hinds. They were happy enough to let me photograph them for a while:



But after five minutes they decided they'd had enough and took off in the most photograph-friendly fashion you could imagine!







I just wish they'd done it in better light! I spent three and half hours driving around in the pouring rain only to get home and find sunshine...