Deer Count 2 April 11th

I will keep this one brief, it was a while ago now and I could consult my notes but the day after our first outing counting deer, the weather broke. So the 10th of April was a no no. Not ideal as it is best to count two days running in case of deer movement but on Rona we kind of know where the pockets of deer will be and although the hinds are difficult to identify it is not impossible. Also we were starting well away from where we finished on the 9th. So there was a distance between the areas North and South.

I did go out briefly on the 10th just around Dry Harbour as we had the wind behind us when we came home through there the day before and saw nothing. I saw a handful of deer there that morning, a good sized group took off in front of me in the big forest at Dry Harbour. But it was not a definitive count or numbers, possibly a dozen deer seen that were definitely not counted the day before.

Thinking back to the day with Mark on the hill I remember it was a really good day for counting, the deer were out and about after the dreich day before. There were not a lot of deer about but groups here and there made up the numbers on the day to 65.

Some interesting moments when the first 4 deer a couple of hinds, calf and follower were spotted only to become 6 after walking for 40 minutes to another point and looking back to see the had increased. There were few deer on the flats (SW Corner) where it would have been better to count them on open ground and in contrast there were plenty groups around the birch tree edge.

There were a couple of memorable moments when we took lunch above An Tempuil, nothing showing out on the ground we were looking over. Then out of nowhere we saw a group of 6, joined by a group of 7 coming out of another birch edge to feed. Spying them whilst eating our lunch two stags appeared out of nowhere in the middle of a bog, they must have been laying down. Amazing how they appear and disappear.

The next was when we were heading home and I had previously spotted a young staggie lying on a knoll in the middle of the birch wood, I was sure he was a member of a much larger family group. As we approached the area the wind shifted and as we peeked round the corner deer were disappearing over the knoll and getting away, impossible to count and as I watched them another three came out of another birch copse, deer central all of a sudden.

We hurried along to a much higher point and when we got there we spotted this group heading across the flats, the stag I had first seen in the middle, a good stag we had not seen before with them and a total of 13 in the group. 65 deer counted in total on the day. So a good way to finish and looking at the numbers round the home parks/forests I guess we have in excess of 150 deer possibly 200 on Rona with a healthy bpopulation of stags on Raasay that come ‘back’ to Rona in September going into October.

All in all an excellent count and now that we are heading into June we will head out to see if we can see any new calves to get an idea of recruitment, it should be interesting.

A big thank you to Mark for his help. Even although he was on holiday.