I've been seeing lots of deer while driving this month. Not very many fawns, but plenty of does and bucks. They mostly just stand on the side of the road, munching the grass on the verge, lifting their heads to gaze placidly at the cars zipping past. Every now and then one will dart across the road, but it's more common for the excitable ones to bound away from the road, across the ditch and into the woods.

The deer here are a dwarfed version of Sitka Blacktailed Deer, and were introduced to the Queen Charlotte Islands (aka Haida Gwaii) back in the 1930s. They are cheeky little buggers too, and smart enough to know that there's no hunting within village limits. Drove past two bucks calmly enjoying the view from a lawn at midday two days ago.

It's more common to see them at dawn and dusk. John has to leave for work at 6:30, so that means I'm up putting the kettle on for tea at 5:30 a.m. One morning last month I was blearily staring out of the kitchen window while filling the kettle at the sink, trying to see if the bunnies in the outside pen were stirring. As my eyes slowly focused and the sky lightened, I realized a doe was looking right at me, standing all of about 15 feet away in the back yard. I'd obviously interrupted breakfast. She slowly walked off to the gate, heading back across the road into the woods. I kept looking - it's a big kettle - and realized that there was a second visitor, a buck, further away in the back yard. I saw him because he moved, wandering past the outside pen and off out the other gate. (The bunnies came out after the visitors left.)

I took this picture last summer at midday, a brazen visitor to my front yard who ate some clover, checked out the fruit trees and then went back to his natural habitat.

We planted a tiny apple tree, gift from Mom & Dad last year. It was a spindly little thing, couldn't have been more than four feet tall. Once in the ground, it blossomed profusely and set 18 apples. The deer ate 17 of them. The one surviving Cannor Select was delicious.