Goodness Grays!

Richmond Park is the largest of London's Royal Parks and was created by Charles I in the 17th century as a deer park. Autumn is the rutting season when the large males are vocal and clash antlers with rivals to attract the attention of the females. I visited the park with friends from the Baddow Camera Club and we walked over four miles around the park in search of these beautiful animals.

The first herd we came across were out in the open and easily spotted by the number of people surrounding them. These were Fallow Deer (bucks and does) and there were plenty of bucks clashing horns, but I don't think the does were paying much attention! Every so often the younger deer would simply run off in an apparently random direction and leave the bucks to do their thing.

We continued our walk around the park in search of the Red Deer, asking people along the way for sightings of these animals. If you look at the photos below, you will see why these deer were harder to find. They were well camouflaged by the autumn colours of the bracken, often only the antlers of the larger male stags being visible with the females (hinds) less easy to spot.

There seemed to be a lot less rutting activity among the Red deer, or maybe it was just harder to see behind all the undergrowth.

While these are wild animals, they are used to human visitors in the park so one can get quite close to these majestic animals. Some of the deer have been tagged (see photo below) and numbers are carefully controlled to maintain a healthy population within the confines of the park.

Richmond Park is vast in scale and a popular haunt for cyclists, runners and strollers. Visiting here in autumn not only allows you to see the deer in action, but you also get to enjoy lovely autumn colours and marvel at the strange variety of mushrooms exploding on the forrest floor.