One last forest outing to add to the boar image portfolio before my trip next week to the Costa Blanca, sun, twenty eight degrees and autumn bird migration in full swing......cant wait !
Its a great time of year in the Forest of Dean (FOD) with day time temperatures still continuing to approach twenty degrees, but autumn is arriving quicker than you think with leaves now starting to yellow.
The alarm goes off at 6.15 am set for my last boar outing but it's still dark, theres little point in just sitting in the car waiting for it to get light so I grab an extra 30 minuets in bed as my target location is only ten minuets drive away. Arriving at the location I over shoot the forest track so continue to the next pull in and park up, still half asleep I head down the track checking the camera settings, the low light requiring some hefty ISO, but needs must.
Along the track the grass verge show signs everywhere of boar activity fresh from last nights foraging so I'm optimistic for an encounter. I'm now at a location I have previously visited, under an oak tree there is the unmistakable bottom with a wiggling tail of boar, crouching down I try to impersonate the vegetation to be invisible but I'm detected....boar are everywhere running to my left and right from the forest back into the bracken heavy tree plantation they feel safe occupy during the day. After the initial frantic activity I wait to see what else may appear, I can hear the alarm snort of a single boar that had been enjoying the new crop of acorns, then its all quite......time to move on ?
Its now over an hour since the family of boar made a bolt for cover, just as I was about to move on to another location when a head appears out of the bracken, its a Melanistic Fallow Deer a variation that seems to be quite common in the FOD, the deer looks at me, I take some images, and with a alarm "bark" its gone
Click image to view...
Melanistic Doe Fallow Deer
My next location is to revisit the forest track that showed signs of last nights boar activity, very slowly as I'm walking along the track a female boar appears out of the forest to my right, I crouch down, the boar looks in my direction, they have very poor eye sight, the sow slowly walks across the track followed by tree juveniles, then two more in a hurry and finally the big male boar that looks like nothing going to trouble him ! I've set the camera to silent continuous shooting to avoid alarming the animals, its slow...way too slow for a twenty second encounter, struggling to shoot maybe five frames a second, next time I'll use rapid burst and see how it goes.
Happy I got some decent shots another location beckons..
Male Wild Boar
Now three hours later I'm coming to the end of the session and struggling up a particularly water logged track, crossing in from me there are maybe four Fallow Deer, the first barks out an alarm call as it disappears deep into the forest, then two more, the last just stops mid track and looks in my direction possibly wondering whether I'm a threat, I rattle off some images, a nice end to the morning outing. The Costa next but I'll be back out next month on my return
Doe Fallow Deer
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