Sometimes we've seen them here from 50 yards away lying in the bracken antlers waving, while people were walking past oblivious on the path 10 paces to the side. They love the bracken and the wildness of this part, finding it easy to walk off into even more secret places. But there is more to this story of wild places bringing enjoyable encounters. Some of the trees in this scene were poisoned at one point by SWT. After a year or two they began to recover and now one can hardly tell. Others were not so lucky.
On how many of the treeless moors around here can we get this close to wild animals? Bracken has a special part to play here. One's heard it called a jungle, disparagingly and SWT have a spraying programme. Yet conservationists would not dream of interfering in rain forests elsewhere in the world. Bracken helps to give another dimension to the area and brings in its own wildlife. But above all it is wholly natural.
One of the stags above has still some of his velvet membrane clinging to parts of his headgear and brow points look raw. The other is more advanced and antlers are ready for the autumn. Some of the rowan further along the path was damaged this morning possibly the result of rough treatment by stags scraping off their velvet. The coats are in beautiful condition much better than any farm livestock I've seen lately despite recent complaints made by farmers about deer spreading disease.
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