Roe and Red Deer

If we're very lucky on one of our daily walks around Golspie's soft countryside we come across one of the roe deer which inhabit its woodlands. They're well used to humans so they don't immediately vanish into the undergrowth: in fact the small group we occasionally see by the road up to Golspie Tower, of which this is one, ignore passing cars and are only surprised when they see a human on foot.

As we age so our walks become increasingly tame, and seeing a gentle roe deer reminds us of the days when, on our much longer and more rugged walks which often took us miles into the Scottish hills, we would suddenly encounter a magnificent beast like this one.

A big red deer stag, out of the rutting season, will often be accompanied by one or more younger stags, as happened here. The advantage of numbers is that it increases the chance of spotting threats like us: our sighting of this king of the hills lasted a few seconds.