Red Deer Rut Richmond Park 2012

These are some of the latest images I took of the Red Deer rut in Richmond park last Saturday.The morning was clear and sunny and there was more action than the previous weekends. The Stags were roaring and appeared more animated and covered more ground searching for either territory or female Deer. As I was making my way to the car I was lucky to encounter a rut between two stags in the open grassland near the Isabella plantation. As the images show both stags spent a considerable amount of time roaring at each other before embarking on a parallel walk to size each other up before locking horns for 3 or 4 times. The action occurred less than 60 feet away and the female deer were waiting in the wooded area for the winner. The rut will continue for the next month but this will be my last visit as I am off to Cyprus in 2 days when I hope to capture some images of migrating birds.