Behind the image: Red deer stag with jackdaws
When it comes to wildlife events, the deer rutting season is a firm favourite of mine during the autumn months. I love the sound of bellowing stags in the early morning along with the harsh clash of antlers as the males compete to own the largest harem.
I have visited Richmond Park in London twice over the last few years since I started doing more wildlife photography, and when I returned last year there was much more activity between the larger and older stags. At one point, a doe got caught up in the middle of a rut between two sparing males, and then another moment where the same two stags ran right across the track I was walking along and it was a very tense moment indeed! My entire experience from that day is on my YouTube channel for anyone interested in watching it!
As the morning grew lighter and warmer, the rutting began to subside and the bellowing from the older stags became less and less frequent. The female deer were grouped together, either grazing or laying down away from the stags until they returned to mate. There were also the younger stags, who were probably one or two years away from taking part in the rut, and they too were often grazing and staying clear of the older males. It was during this moment, when the atmosphere became less tense, that I noticed the symbiosis between the younger stags and the bird species that were hanging around with them. I first noticed a flock of starlings that were flying around and landing on the backs and heads of the female deer, but they didn’t settle for long and they swiftly moved to another feeding site. The other bird species that were hanging around the younger stags and does, were jackdaws; a dozen or so were hopping around on their backs and picking off, most likely, small insects from the deers’ hide and from within their ears at times!
There was one young stag that was fairly close by and I enjoyed watching the jackdaws jumping on and off of its back, and all the while it didn’t seemed bothered by the birds’ social antics. I wanted to capture a moment with the stag and jackdaws together. In between filming and photographing this stag, one of the older stags I was photographing earlier started to bellow again. The young stag stopped grazing and looked up and at the bellowing stag. It was at this moment when the jackdaws also became interested in what was happening, and they stopped feeding and jumping around and turned to look in the same direction as the young stag — the larger male was off to my right and slightly behind where I was positioned. Although this image doesn’t encapsulate the main rutting event that many photographers go to capture, I enjoyed watching the deer and jackdaws coexisting together and I was very happy to capture a moment where both species were curious in what was happening just out of shot.
