In the picture above is a whitetail doe, Odocoileus virginianus, in a woodland clearing. This picture was taken in mid-September and shows the light brown pelage of spring and summer.

In the second picture, you see another whitetail doe whose pelage has transitioned to the greyish winter coloration. This picture was taken in early November of the same year and same locality. The deer, however, were different individuals.

Aside from the beauty of the scenes and the subjects, what can be learned here is that color transition in whitetails seems to happen within a fairly short time.

The post Do Whitetails Turn Gray by November? appeared first on GJM Nature Media.

These two pictures illustrate the way protective coloration helps to conceal wild creatures. The first picture shows two whitetail deer foraging in sedges in the dry river bottom along a portion of the Trinity river. The second picture shows one deer clearly, can you spot the second deer?

This demonstrates that uniform coloration can act to conceal an animal and accounts for the selection of these types of coloring over spots or stripes or something else.

The post Now You See Me, Now You Don’t appeared first on GJM Nature Media.

These two photographs of whitetail deer crossing the Trinity River show how much land can change in two years of dry times. The scene in the first photograph was taken in 2011 the second in 2013 during late October and mid-November respectively. During this relatively short span of time, the river became marshland and was invaded by plants that could tolerate intermittent inundation by water. Fort Worth was experiencing an eight year long drought during this time.

The post Whitetail Deer Crossing the Trinity River-Habitat Changes appeared first on GJM Nature Media.