Welcome to Matthew Peaster's Countrymans Diary.
Award winning wildlife photographer Matthew Peaster from Over Stowey writes about what to look out for in the natural world right on your door step. All you need to do is read this feature, turn off that computer and get walking — not always very far either!
Autumn on The Quantock Hills
Red stag roaring
Stag walking past me
Autumn on the Quantock Hills signals the climax to the year in respect to our wildlife. All the gentle spring colours and sunny summer days - ok, some sunny days – feel like they are all wrapped in a natural way as a sign to prepare for winter. Cold frosty mornings, clear sunny days, the changing colours, golden sunlight at a sensible hour – usually in our eyes as we travel to work – and longer colder nights all add to this natural extravaganza.
There is though one thing for me that really makes autumn as special as it really is – the rut. Brought to our living rooms last year on ‘Atumnwatch’ by the BBC the same scenes and antics are going on right here on the Quantocks. What makes the Quantocks so special for many people, including myself, is the wild herd of Red Deer. There are also wild Fallow on to the west and Sika in Dorset. These too rut during October.
Recently I met up with Tim and Andy, from the Quantocks AONB Ranger team. On the perfect cold and frosty morning we walked out across the hilltop. To the north of us we could hear the unmistakable sounds of the stags ‘doing their stuff’. Just to sit back and watch the comings and goings, the interactions, the stand-offs, the potential confrontations and the stags ‘dressage’ is just something special. We all felt extremely privileged to be in such wonderful surroundings, without the usual daily rush, to watch the sun gently illuminate the eastern sky and start to witness the drama of the deer rut. There was one unfortunate aspect, two people who had arranged for a ‘Rut Walk’ with Tim and Andy had not turned up, presumably still tucked up in their warm beds on what was the first autumnal frost. That gave myself and Tim a great chance to use Andy’s telescope and watch quite clearly the interaction between the deer.
After a short while we wished each other a successful morning – after all I had pictures to take! The following few hours proved to some of the most exhilarating encounters I have had. I didn’t quite get to where I had planned, it never seems to work that way with wildlife, especially deer. As I stalked through the oak woods the group of deer I had chosen to start with were slowly making their way back to the woods to feast on acorns. These oak ‘seeds’ provide valuable energy not only to the deer but to the hill sheep, squirrels, Jays, pigeons and mice. As is often the way the following five hours rushed passed – I had stags fighting, hinds barking at me, other stags running past me without knowing I was there, stags going past which I didn’t know were there, deer mating and the constant ‘noise’ of stags roaring and groaning was absolutely fantastic. It will be a morning that I will remember for quite some time.
A word of warning – the deer are wild and potentially dangerous so please try not to pressure them or interfere with their behaviour. I watched several people walking through the combes apparently oblivious to the goings on just yards away. Others though just want to walk right up to the deer as though they are in a park. These certainly are not park deer and deserve a great deal of respect and the conservation of a healthy herd is a vital component to the fabric of the Quantocks.
If the rut can’t quite get you out there then surely the autumn colours and fungi can. I mistakenly thought last year that there were only a few species of fungi. So I bought an ID book to help pick out what I was photographing. That proved to complicate things – we actually have hundreds of different kinds of fungi and finding them can be a real challenge. To find the edible field mushrooms is even more of a treat as there’s nothing quite like fresh wild food – but make sure you’re 110% sure its edible, there’s a lot of mushrooms which aren’t!
Until next time!
