Exploring Kootenay Lake

The first two items deal with white-tailed deer and fencing (not fighting with swords), but the last item does show fighting, but in play.

Fences can serve a number of different purposes, but one of them is to keep domestic animals confined. Another is to prevent wildlife from accessing a region. The first two pictures suggest that these fences have questionable wildlife functionality. 

A female white-tailed deer easily jumps over a wire-mesh fence. These fences seem to be primarily developed to keep domestic animals in, not wild animals out. Photo by Cynthia.

A male white-tailed deer climbs under a simple rail fence, but the fence confines horses.

A portrait of the same 2½ year-old deer.

Here are three whitetail spikehorns (1½ years old). Two of them are play fighting and one has his head down. Male whitetails always seem to fight antler to antler. This is quite unlike the female whitetails shown earlier who stood up and brandished their forelimbs.

Two females stand on hind legs. They are beginning to spar for dominance.

I had always assumed that female white-tailed deer were fairly docile. Despite being really common around here, I had never seen them fight — never, that is, until yesterday. To my considerable surprise, I watched two females rise up on their hind legs and brandish one another with their forelimbs.

Their ears were held out horizontally in a form of threat, and their tails were extended horizontally indicating that each felt she was (or should be) dominant.

They each were presumably sparring for the dominant position in the herd. The event lasted for under five seconds where the forelegs were waved up and down, but never seemed to make contact with the other deer. It was all an exercise in intimidation, and one of them soon gave up and ran away, thus leaving the position of dominance to the other. 

It is unclear whether the females of the other deer species around here (mule deer, elk, caribou, moose) similarly battle for dominance. This happens much too rarely for me to have seen it and I have found no reference to them fighting each other.

There follows some pictures of the combat.

To start, here is a detail of the above picture of them starting their combat.

The two combatants faced each other and pawed the air in front of themselves. The facing deer has one foreleg up and the other down but she quickly switched their positions again and again. The deer with its back to us has both forelegs up.

The deer with its back to us is beginning to accept defeat. Its ears, that had expressed a threat, are dropping, and its tail, claiming dominance, is down. Its adversary, facing us, is carrying on with gusto.

The deer, that had its back to us, gives up the fight and runs away.

The event was over quickly. At no time previously have I seen female white-tailed deer act this way. They can be more combative than I ever suspected.

Squirrels cannot reach our bird feeder. Yet, birds can be sloppy eaters and frequently cause their food, black-oil sunflower seeds, to fall to the deck below. A resourceful squirrel can fetch one and spirit it away to one of its winter storehouses. Each day, the squirrel scampers back and forth between a storage place and beneath the bird feeder. Always, the squirrel carries but one seed at a time. It seems like endless work, but presumably it will pay off when there is snow on the ground.

A squirrel finds a black-oil sunflower seed. Beside it is the empty shell of a previous one.

The squirrel holds the oilseed. The shell casing is falling to the left.

Then putting the seed in its mouth, it rushes off to add the seed to its provisions. Strangely, the squirrel alway starts on its way first by leaping.

Unlike the grizzly bears seen a week ago, black bears often come into town in the fall. It is there that black bears might find food to fatten up before they enter torpor. On this occasion, a sow and two cubs were not scrounging garbage, but feasting on walnuts.

One can often see them with their mouths open almost as if they were huffing at their watchers. They were were not huffing. While occasionally noticing the people drifting by, even those taking pictures, they were just chewing walnuts and spitting out the shells.

Chosen pictures often show their eyes as if they often would look our way. This is not the case for, while aware of people nearby, they seemed just largely to ignore watchers. 

This is the mother bear munching. She is quite large, having fed extensively before torpor.

Here are the three of them. The two cubs are eating (one with a walnut in its mouth), while the mother watches.

A cub sits in the tree. Photo by Dorothy.

The sow and cub up the walnut tree and there to sleep for a while. Photo by Cynthia.

A cub is now descending the walnut tree.

The mother and one of the cubs. Both are chewing walnuts.