anomalies

 I think Clarkie was the first to see her, a single doe feeding in the back pasture. 

She appeared now and then over the course of a couple of weeks. It seemed a little bit unusual to see a solitary deer. Usually they appear in herds of a half dozen or so. Given the time of the year, I wondered whether she was prepping for a birth or whether one had already occurred. Sure enough, the other day we saw her with a fawn. The fawn couldn't have been much more than a day or two old. You could barely make her out as they walked through the tall grass. The fawn would mostly follow mom, but every once in awhile, it would start running around; for no apparent reason and in no particular direction. It was running just for the fun of it; just happy to be alive in June in Vermont. Sometimes the mom would join in the fun. It was wonderful to see.

The other day I was out on the usual morning walk and heard the sound of a crow screeching over the hill in the back. It went on for hours and I heard the same sound coming from a different crow up the road a piece. I wondered if there was some parenting going on; if they were directing/training some offspring who had recently fledged. On the same day, I heard the sound of a fox barking from deep in the woods, and wondered again if it was literally "barking" out directions to her new pups. It certainly seemed like the right time of year for that.

Part of the enjoyment of observing behaviors in the natural world is when anomalous behaviors occur; trying to figure out what's going on. I've been doing this blog for many years and this is one of the first times I've considered some of these anomalies as signs of parenting behavior. In hindsight, it seems like I've probably been missing these parenting clues for many years.