** A Stag Do At Knowle Park.**

After looking around the shops at Sevenoaks we then went to Knowle  Park,we arrived at about mid day. There was the usual small herd of females near to the road on the way to the car park. Once there not too far away was the white stag that I photographed before.

Close by was a few females to which I slowly walked towards in the hope of getting a few shots of them. The first one I came across was doing it's impression of a lumberjack.

This is a few of the others in the group.

 

 



 

From here I headed off up the slope on the right because there was another stag feeding, and then it laid down.

 

 

While shooting the above stag(not literally) I was chatting to a guy from Chatham, it was his first visit and he was very impressed with the place, as we talked we turned to watch the white stag and a few moments later the brown stag behind us stood up again, thinking nothing of it we again turned away talking, then no sooner had we turned our backs to it we had to turn back again. The reason being that there was another large darker brown stag charging straight toward the one we was close to. Then this happened.

 

 

 

At this point we decided to back away, being close to 2 rutting Fallow deer is not a good idea.
 These 2 went at it for what seemed like ages, then the one on the right backed down and moved away. Now all this time the white stag was watching from a short distance away, and after the 2 brown ones stopped he then took on the winner of that rut. This didn't last for very long at all and the white one conceded, then the other brown one came back for seconds, this time it went on for longer than the first time, but when it lost again, instead of going their separate ways, this time it ended up in a full speed chase down into the wooded area.
After all the rutting the victor turned out to be the lighter brown stag, which is showing some signs of previous battles. It just goes to show that it is not the stag with the bigger antlers that is going to be victorious, it's what you can do with them.
In a couple of the photo's, which didn't come out as well as I was hoping, if zoomed in a little the white of their eye is visible.
After all this excitement I needed a rest so I found a nice spot down by the woodland area and sat for a while. I suddenly realised that I wasn't alone, sitting on a old tree stump was a squirrel happily having snacking on something.

It was now time to make my way back to the car park, so it was my last chance to find anything.There was a few Sika Deer here and there, I did manage to take a few shots but they was a bit distant.

I was virtually back when I was just about to take a nice shot of 3 Fallow Deer near leafy tree when they did this to me. What a bummer!!

Do you think they was trying to tell me something??
Well before leaving for home we went to the restaurant for snack, and when we was on our way back a noticed some fungi on this tree quite near so I went and took a photo of it. I didn't know what it was, unlike Greenie of http://www.greenieinthewild.blogspot.co.uk/ I am not good on fungi I.D, but this one was fairly easy to find in the book, I believe it to be a Golden Pholiota (Pholiota Cerifera)

Just as we was leaving and backing out of the parking bay we had to stop because I happened to see this poor old deer in the bay right behind us, see below.

All in all I ended up having a day that was better than I could have expected. This was my first deer rut, hopefully it won't be my last..
** Thank you Knowle Park.**