Fawn rising
This spring, new roe deer fawns are born in quiet woodlands across the countryside. Adele Brand describes a fawn’s first year of life, and asks why farmers and some naturalists are worried by the growing numbers of deer
Deer diary
Watch the Wildlife Rescue Centre hand-rear orphaned roe deer fawns in series two, episode eight of Born to Be Wild, BBC Scotland, available on iPlayer
She chose a cradle on the edge. A fawn rests where she left it: russet fur dappled with white infant smudges, immense ears high, soft eyes turned on me. Its backdrop is woodland and its hooves almost touch a public footpath created by people; no doubt the doe exploits both, squeezing under a stile built by human hands while searching for ivy and bramble. Her o spring watches me with perfect calm, a marvel of instinct keeping it so still that even the dog beside me – hastily leashed – fails to spot it.
“Fawns aare a model of discretion among the spring carnival of woodland colour”
Roe deer, most elegant of phantoms, tiptoe along many edges: woodland and farmland, past and present, urbanisation and nature. These double-sided messengers bring the wild to our gardens and testify about human whim to the woods. Once abundant, then almost gone, now rising again, this native species knew this land before we named it, and has become a parable of ecological change.
The woods are a riot of bluebells when roe fawns are born in May, chiffchaffs chanting in the treetops and grass high in the glades. Far from the heaths and rugged moors where herds of red deer roam wild, the little roe selects gentle countryside: copses and arable fields, golf courses and churchyards. Agile with long hind legs and unobtrusive in sleek brown fur – greyer in winter – roe do not seek company. They can form unstable herds in winter but summer groupings are often simply a doe and her fawns. Twins are common; triplets not unknown. Mottled with baby spots, left alone as the mother feeds, the fawns are a model of discretion among the spring carnival of woodland colour.
The doe nurses them up to nine times a day for the first month; between feeds, she browses selectively on species that evolved under the roe’s thrall. Wood avens, a cluster of butter-yellow petals, increases its root size when nibbled, and may even drop its nitrogen levels to deter a repeat meal. Some plants – especially silver birch and grasses – exploit roe in return as a passenger service for seeds. It has been that way for most of the past 10,000 years after roe entered the thawing peninsula that would become Britain. Our Mesolithic forebears left roe bones at Star Carr in Yorkshire; they, like us, must have known this small deer as a graceful shadow in the glades at dusk.
Roe deer nurse their fawns frequently for the first month, before weaning their young at three or four months old 
A roe deer doe with her triplets. This small family group will remain together over summer, autumn and winter, disbanding before the doe gives birth again in spring
PREGNANT PAUSE
If roe’s story as a species can be read in fossils, the tale of each fawn holds an extraordinary prologue. As the languid days of mid-July warm the woods beneath a canopy of beech leaves, fawns follow the doe on feeding forays. But their father rubs his forehead against small trees and scrapes the ground. His antlers, dropped in November and regrown almost immediately, are free of velvet and ready for battle. Roe bucks do not contest for a herd like red deer stags; instead they defend a range of up to 200 hectares, mating with the does within. A figure-of-eight pattern is beaten into the undergrowth as they chase in courtship.
So the fawns, still dependent on their mother, face her becoming pregnant again – but incredibly, the fertilised ovum only develops to a diameter of 5mm in the first five months. It is not implanted into the uterus until January, and grows rapidly thereafter. Roe are the only known hoofed mammal to display this strategy – known as embryonic diapause – and it spares them to feed rather than rut in autumn. Now about 70% of adult body mass, the fawns join their mother as she feasts on fallen crab-apples and fungi such as puffalls and brittlegills.
A delayed pregnancy may ensure that both rutting and fawn birth occur at optimal times of year. But the roe has faced other challenges. It caught the eye of hunters long after Mesolithic times; the Domesday Book notes that ‘haii capreolorum’ – hays or hunting enclosures for roe deer – were common. The Normans also introduced fallow deer to Britain and, within a few centuries, this sociable, spotted deer of parkland had overtaken roe in abundance. It was soon the motive for a fatal blow: roe were stripped of forest law protections because they were believed to chase away more favoured deer. Hunted intensively, and with its favoured woodlands in decline, roe clung on in Scotland, but became only a name on the map in Wales – the Afon Iwrch, River of Roe, flowed in Clwyd long after the deer was gone. England’s last known specimen was killed in Northumberland in the early 18th century.
Then its fate changed. In 1800, Lord Dorchester released Scottish roe into Dorset – this later provided a source population for Epping Forest, while German deer were imported into Norfolk in the 1880s. Save for a decline during the war years, they have been steadily reclaiming the countryside ever since.
Today, many copses and conifer plantations host pregnant roe, and frosty fields reveal hoofprints. The near-mature fawns that survive winter will be driven away a few weeks before the doe gives birth again. A doe may have her first fawn at 14 months, but bucks are unlikely to breed until old enough to challenge other males. Regardless, all roe will have been sampling vegetation since they were five to 10 days old, and thus find themselves cast in a new role: that of villain, of a conservation success gone rogue.
DEER DAMAGE
Grazing deer do damage. Woodland is losing its understorey, and with it the sweet song of the nightingale. Farming has noted consumption of cereals and kale. Horticulture has experienced damage to orchards. Forestry finds the protection of seedings challenging. There is consensus that deer numbers are concerning, but splitting the impacts of Britain’s six species is not easy, especially when they interact with each other; muntjac suppress roe to an extent. The species that rings most alarm bells is the roe’s old nemesis, the fallow. However, roe do interfere with coppicing by browsing hazel regrowth. Cutting stools higher helps prevent damage, as does felling larger areas – although that is best avoided where dormice are present. Debates about deer management are often tagged with a footnote that no natural predators are here to assist, but that is untrue. Foxes are enthusiastic roe fawn predators – studies show they can account for over 80% of fawn mortality. Wolf and lynx have left us, but they were not the reason why roe almost became extinct and their absence cannot fully explain deer abundance now. Predation has drama, but the subtle force of landscape change wields greater power.
FIELD GUIDE TO UK DEER
The time-honoured way to identify deer is to look at their rear quarters, which is fortunate given their general skittishness. Antlers are also key.
1 Red deer are twice as tall as roe and much more muscular; they are usually found in parks, mountains or open countryside. Mature stags have enormous, spreading antlers.
2 Sika have a white rump edged with black.
3 Fallow also have a white rump but show a dark tail.
4 Muntjac have short rear legs giving them a ‘hunched’ appearance and have small unbranched antlers.
5 Roe have an obvious white rump. Adults are not spotted but have black ‘moustache’ stripes; bucks have branched antlers of three points or fewer.
6 Water deer –a similar size to roe – look heavily built and are usually found in marshy habitats.
By planting cereal crops in autumn, we have given roe a feast during barren winters. And as afforestation receives vocal political and public support, Britain’s tree cover has increased. If we create roe habitat, we can expect them to exploit it. As with most conservation conundrums, we will only resolve the roe riddle when we consider our impact on the land as a whole.
Adele Brand is a mammal ecologist and author with a passion for connecting people with wildlife. Her books include The Hidden World of the Fox (William Collins, £12.99).
TRACKING ROE DEER
Those dainty steps leave neat cloven tracks, less splayed than a sheep and with a width of 3cm to a muntjac’s 2cm. In very soft soil or deep snow, the dew claws (vestigial claws above the hooves) may show. But roe deer write many other stories on landscape: look for circular scrapes (about 60cm across) on the woodland floor where leaves have been cleared to create a resting patch; you may find several in close vicinity. Trees with a trunk of about 5cm attract bucks as territory markers; long scratches at their base signal hooves at work. Rutting pairs create ‘roe rings’ as they chase around trees. Roe dung is rabbit-like, but inclined to clump when the deer has a richer diet. Use binoculars to scan fields adjacent to woodland, especially at dusk, to glimpse roe deer. Arable fields attract them; sheep pastures may be avoided, and the electric fencing that often comes with horses excludes them. Don’t forget to listen, too: roe bark, somewhat like a fox but a rougher, drier sound.