Male Fallow deer at the Phoenix Park in Dublin, Ireland
The male fallow deer is known as a buck, the female is a doe, and the young a fawn. Their life span is around 12-16 years. The species has great variations in the color of their coats, with four main variants, "common", "menil", melanistic and leucistic - a genuine color variety, not albinistic. The white is the lightest colored, almost white; common and menil are darker, and melanistic is very dark, sometimes even black (easily confused with the sika deer). Common: Chestnut coat with white mottles that are most pronounced in summer with a much darker, unspotted coat in the winter. Light-colored area around the tail, edged with black. Tail is light with a black stripe. Menil: Spots more distinct than common in summer and no black around the rump patch or on the tail. In winter, spots still clear on a darker brown coat. Melanistic (black): All year black shading to grayish-brown. No light-colored tail patch or spots. Leucistic (white, but not albino): Fawns cream-colored, adults become pure white, especially in winter. Dark eyes and nose, no spots. Most herds consist of the common coat variation, yet it is not rare to see animals of the menil coat variation. The Melanistic variation is rarer and white very much rarer still. Only bucks have antlers, which are broad and shovel-shaped (palmate) from three years. In the first two years the antler is a single spike. They are grazing animals; their preferred habitat is mixed woodland and open grassland. During the rut bucks will spread out and females move between them, at this time of year fallow deer are relatively ungrouped compared to the rest of the year when they try to stay together in groups of up to 150. Agile and fast in case of danger, fallow deer can run up to a maximum speed of 30 mph (48 km/h) over short distances (being naturally less muscular than other cervids such as roe deer, they are not as fast). Fallow deer can also make jumps up to meters high and up to 5 meters in length.
Size: 3744px × 5616px
Location: Fifteen Acres, Phoenix Park, Dublin, Republic of Ireland, Western Europe
Photo credit: © DE ROCKER / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
Model Released: No
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