Nature watch: October

Glimpse fallow deer in woodland and the impressive antlers of the rutting bucks

This month of falling leaves is a marvellous time for walks in woodland where it is harvest time for wildlife. Our native oaks produce heavy crops of acorns, on which grey squirrels fatten up for winter. Already, its dense silver-grey winter coat has started to appear as it forages on the woodland floor. Acorns are stored for leaner times ahead by burying them under the leaf litter, and those that are not recovered will sprout the following year. Jays will do the same - many an oak has begun itslife as an acorn in the beak of the jay. With its bold white rump and sky-blue wing coverts, there is no mistaking this handsome bird, but if you do need confirmation, itsraucous voice will leave you in no doubt.

Mid-October, the first frosts biting, the leaves turning, and a full moon rising over the New Forest. Deer are ghosting among the oaks and beeches. There are reds, roes and sikas, too, but these are fallow deer and they have lived here perhaps since Roman times. Not all fallow deer have the dappled coats of the ornamental parkland herds. In colour, they range from donkey-brown to almost-black and, sometimes, white. The bucks, having spent the summer as solitary wanderers or in small groups of bachelors, now proudly flaunt their bony antlers as they prepare to do battle for the right to mate. The finest antlers are carried by the seven-year-olds - the best of all having finger-like tips, known as spellers, spreading from their broad-bladed ends. In the sharp, still air, I can hear tawny owls hooting in the depths of the wood. And a rhythmic, rasping grunt that rings among the ancient trees: a fallow buck in rut. Again, the buck throws down his challenge: the primeval echo of the Saxon wildwood that stood here long before William the Conqueror.

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