Tag Archives: fallow deer

Death In The Morning.

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October in the New Forest in Southern England is the time of the fallow deer rut and I thought this might be a good time to consider an unusual event that I witnessed exactly 20 years ago today in the early hours of the 19th October 2000.

It was shaping up to be an almost perfect New Forest morning; dawn was approaching, birds were singing and there wasn’t a breath of wind to disturb the air. Ideal conditions for sound recording I though, but still I picked up my camera bag from the back of the vehicle, doing my best to ignore the tape recorder: sound is frequently of secondary importance to cameramen — maybe it’s brain defect. I looked through the trees towards the horizon and instinctively knew the sun was coming up, but not in a meaningful way — a black bruise of cloud was moodily attempting to eliminate daytime altogether, and it seemed unlikely this was going to be the perfect day I was hoping for. For some time there wouldn’t be enough light to film anything, especially under the trees. Reluctantly I switched to the sound kit, but grabbed a stills camera as a comforter — stuffing it into my jacket. 

A week or so earlier I had noticed some early arrivals on rutting stands (animal behaviourists call the sites the females visit where the action takes place – leks). On this stand a buck had arrived attended by two does — this before the ground has been churned up by tussling bucks.

Form many years I had been filming the fallow deer rut on the Forest, rising early through October in an attempt to get footage of the competing males followed by successful individuals mating with attendant does (mature females) these gathered close by the stand while the bucks battle for supremacy. When the bucks are evenly matched the event is quite a spectacle; and the sound of clashing antlers resonating across the forest as the sun comes up is spine tingling experience; and on this particular ‘lights out’ morning sound recording seemed my best option. It would also be a break from filming the activity which in the New Forest can be quite challenging. 

Occasionally early morning light can be exceptional, but in October there are no guarantee: when it is wet and miserable, activity is often minimal.

Had I been working on this day with the benefit of a modern digital camera I would have certainly managed an exposure even in poor light, but back then film speeds were unforgiving; and to be honest the bracken was so tall on the site I was working, I could hardly see the fallow bucks when their heads were down and locked in battle.

A buck lying down resting on a stand is not easy to see in dense pine woodland.
An active buck is far more obvious, but filming in this kind of habitat can be difficult.

Usually the biggest, strongest buck on a stand will win the opportunity to father offspring, and the most impressive bucks will usually hold the largest entourage of does as they come into season. When we use the term survival of the fittest, this kind of scenario is what we imagine, but natural selection has many faces, and it is difficult not to think of this fight for male dominance in terms of a brutal victory or defeat.

However, closer observation reveals that this really isn’t about damaging the competition, it is about demonstrating greater fitness, which encourage less well equipped bucks to stand down and live to fight another day when they might perhaps become better equipped to challenge as the dominant male. Usually a buck that is losing ground to an opponent will break away and leave the field of play. This is all very interesting to watch, but on rare occasions things can go wrong, with one buck inadvertently causing the death of another, but such events are very unusual and I’ve witnessed it only once.

Open oak woodland is easier to film in than under the pines.

On this stand a buck begins to call — and this is the best indication that the rut has started. Presently he has two does in attendance, and numbers will substantially increase over the next couple of weeks. The ground will be churned as other bucks come in to challenge, and many males will become exhausted by all the bellowing and battling which occurs both in the early morning and the evening. This buck may or may not be robust enough to retain his real estate over the next couple of weeks. The bigger bucks always have the most impressive antlers and in recent weeks will have achieved considerable bulk. As the rut approaches the largest bucks put on weight and develop barrel chests, this the power house that enables them to drive off bucks of a lesser stature.

Wildlife disturbance was a serious problem across the Forest even 20 years ago, especially for deer. I was once sat quietly by a stand when two dogs came rushing through, scattering the fallow in every direction. Two minutes later and older lady came down the ride on a fine horse. I walked out onto the ride and asked if she once had owned two dogs; she admitted that the dogs were hers and I pointed out where they had run through the deer and seriously disturbed them. “What deer?” she said. “There are no deer here”… And you bloody photographers are an absolute nuisance.” I found it hard to disagree and with her final comment Lady Marjorie Brain-Dead kicked her horse hard in the flanks and sped away into the distance.

There are fewer red deer (Cervus elaphus) on the forest than fallow (Dama dama) and their rut tends to occur on open heathland. They will tolerate a presence providing you are in position before it gets light, but it is necessary to keep an appropriate distance and remain very still. What they don’t like is being observed from two positions at once, and when anybody else showed up, I’d lie down in the heather and disappear.

On the day of the unusual event, to my great good fortune, there were no early morning dog walkers, and as I settled into the bracken, a buck immediately started to roar — although the noise is are more a series of deep resonant belches than a roar and can be quite unnerving if you’ve never heard it before. Then, a sudden sharp clatter of antlers to my left revealed a large pair of bucks, with their heads down and legs braced like two opposing teams in a rugby scrum, engaged is a serious game of push and shove; churning up the mud they were evenly matched and appeared to be getting nowhere. Occasionally they would break off to take stock of one another; then, dropping their heads again, they’d smash their antlers together with explosive force. Even in poor light I could see taut muscles straining across their shoulders and hind-quarters as they put every ounce of their strength into the battle. Then, suddenly, another couple of bucks started up behind me.

I had never witnessed two pairs of bucks battling in close proximity before, but today it happened — obvious because for once, I’d gone out into the natural world without my cine camera — but never mind — I had been in place for half an hour and there was still no light to speak of. A third equally impressive contest then started up way over under the pines in woodland 100 yards to my right; and t first I wasn’t much interested because this was a stand that I’d looked at before, and the bucks there had been young and very half-hearted about things. In any case my preference was to watching fallow beneath stands of oak trees where the forest had opened out a little and there was more light. This couple were in any case deep in the bracken and didn’t gain my full attention for about twenty minutes, until they eventually arrived where I was, and almost ran over me. I had realised there was something odd about them from the start, and I began to make sense of it: not once had they raised their heads to assess one another, and it was clear their antlers were locked: instead of attempting to gain advantage they were simply trying to break free, bouncing and whirling like energised toys equipped with those special batteries that never run down.

Suddenly one of the bucks dropped to the ground almost in front of me.

The the poor animal that went down as if by misfortune he’d been given the cheaper batteries that always let you down in a crisis. Neither buck had been aware of me, and so I moved closer, just in time to see the stricken buck rise up and slam against a tree; but this was now a puppet show, the fallen individual had no life of his own and was moving entirely under the control of his opponents strength, the dead dragged along by the living buck’s immense power. Then the standing buck saw me… more to the point he saw how close I was. I thought my presence might change the dynamic enough to startle the living animal into breaking free — bat stayed a fallow deer body length from the action (for obvious reasons). With a Herculean effort the big buck pulled his head up and to one side and then down, pivoting on his front legs he brought his whole body in an arc across his dead adversary and with that the antlers detached and the stricken body lay like a sack of dead meat on the ground, which is exactly what it had become. Despite the still poor light, I snapped a moody picture of the pair just as this occurred. The less artistic amongst us would describe the image as blurred… But I’d would call it atmospheric. The detached buck once free disappeared into the forest in an instant and I was left at the side of the ride with a corpse at my feet.

The reason I didn’t submit my article for publication was that my pictures were unpublishable: magazine editors can be a dreary predictable lot — but this is the kind of pictures I’d prefer to take — one that reflects the reality of a situation, although it wouldn’t win any awards in ‘The Chocolate Box School of Photography’ category. I could of course have used a flash and achieved a very different image — but that’s a matter of personal choice: what I would describe as dramatic others might consider no more than peculiarity of choice.

 I suspected the dead buck had a broken neck, but I wasn’t sure; and I’ll admit my first thought wasn’t, ‘Does this meat belong to the queen’, but rather: “How can I get this animal into the back of my estate” parked as it was 50 metres back along the drive Then I suddenly remembered Woody Allen’s comic piece about shooting a moose in the woods after which he tied the body to his fender and drives home. The moose of course wakes up. Imagine then what might happen if a full sized fallow buck woke up inside rather than outside of your vehicle — probably not quite so funny when you’re driving along the M27. But it was never going to happen: I could just about lift the bucks head by his antlers – without a winch there was no chance that I could get the dead animal into my estate… So, there was a sudden change of plan.

A still warm fallow buck that has died under such unfortunate circumstances is very sad, but I was overcome more with the thought — why waste this? I hardly ever eat meat, but I hate waste and there’s enough here to feed a family through winter, without anybody even having to kill a turkey for Christmas: but the idea that I might move a dead buck by myself was entirely impractical.

So, I went off to visit the keeper who’s beat this was. He knew I was filming nearby, and this was his day off, but he was still pleased to see me… Until I told him my story and said that I really needed him to come and winch the dead buck into his vehicle. We could then take it back to his place, do an autopsy and try and work out exactly what had caused the buck to conk out under the stress he had suffered: fallow bucks don’t eat much, if they eat anything at all during the rut and their physical condition quite naturally deteriorates over a two or three week period, but seldom do they die. It was a long shot to find out and my friend was less than excited about the prospect of cutting up a dead animal on his day off, but he agreed and we took the buck back to one of his outbuildings to take a look at his insides.

The first thing we noticed was an external mark low on the buck’s thorax — this area was badly bruised, but the skin wasn’t pierced; most likely this injury was the result of a sharp prod from the point of an opponents antler. As a zoology student I had become interested in dissecting any dead animal that I happened to find, but through most of my adult life I’ve resisted the temptation to pick up every thing I come across that isn’t road kill, just to find out why it died — The ‘why’ of things has always interested me. This would be the largest animal I had worked on… And as I haven’t since stumbled across a recently deceased elephant… it still is — but there’s always time.

We cut into the thorax very carefully, avoiding nerves and blood vessels and discovered the lungs to be intact and undamaged; but there was a bloody mark on the inside wall of the chest that lined up with the external mark that we had already noted and both marks lined up fairly well with what appeared to be minor damage to the lower tip of the heart.

It is impossible to say for certain, but it seemed likely that the blow the buck had suffered, might have been survivable, had he not locked into a prolonged tussle with another male. The match had gone on too long and most likely the unfortunate creatures heart had given out, and in that sense it might be considered to be a rare battle to the death.

 Somewhere in the woods, the champion of this match might have been mating with does that this buck had paid the ultimate price for. There is perhaps a romantic notion that if he had not received a fatal injury, then he might have been the one carrying on his genetic line, but the temptation to say that he had died of a broken heart, even for the anthropomorphically minded, might prove to be a literal step too far. 

This is the stand amongst the pines from where the locked together bucks had started on their fatal journey. In 2020 on an early October morning another buck will now be in place waiting for all comers, because holding a traditional stand seems to pass through time from one generation to another. Back in October 2000, within a few days of the unfortunate event, this buck, with a substantial wrack of antlers had moved in, and his characteristic barrel chest suggests that he might have ended up as one of life’s winners.

The New Forest – Living in the Past With Lots of Litter.

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For most of my life I lived close by the New Forest in Hampshire and have always considered it special, because although busy with visitors during summer, it has remained an important haven for wildlife as the surrounding countryside has steadily urbanised.

The New Forest looks natural, but in reality it is heavily managed, and with increasing pressures from both inside and out, some say that it is no longer the place that it once was – but people have been saying that for generations. A more considered analysis suggests, that it is just a question of how far back you want to go before you start moaning about what you think has changed.

In many ways this is a notoriously conservative area, stuck architecturally somewhere between the Middle Ages and the early 20th Century. The Forest certainly isn’t noted for its modern energy saving buildings and panoramic views across the heath, because few such places exist.

It is difficult to make the case for modernity, when there are cottages as beautiful as this one near Lyndhurst. I am guessing it was named Bee Hive Cottage because of the similarity of the thatch over the door to a traditional straw beehive.
New Forest cottages are often small utilitarian buildings and not many are as beautiful as this one close to the main town of Lyndhurst. Its name Beehive Cottage might have something to do with the thatch over the door which is not dissimilar to a traditional straw beehive.

There has been very little movement beyond Edwardian  times, apart that is, from the traffic – almost everything else appears to have stalled around 1910, and ‘being there’ sometimes feels more like a museum or theme park experience than any modern reality… and this is unlikely to change now that the New Forest has become a National Park because Britain’s National Parks seem habitually locked into some imaginary idyl of the past. But then that’s essentially what us Brits do best – don’t you know?  We look back fondly and say, ‘things were better back then’ – which of course is little more than delightful delusion. 

The creation of the New Forest landscape is down to management with particular emphasis on the grazing of livestock but its scenic beauty is not in question.
The creation of the New Forest landscape is very much down to management, with particular emphasis on the grazing of livestock, not that this detracts from its scenic beauty.

I once considered buying a house in the Forest, but was put off by the crumbling mud wall of an outbuilding that had to remain exactly as it was for historical reasons, along with a rusting tin roof that on no account could be replaced by something more appropriate; such exacting attention to detail can only have heighten my appreciation that the Forest is at least genuinely old.

A Brief History of The New Forest.

In the past the Forest was often referred to as ‘a furzey waste’ (meaning gorse covered) a term that goes back well before 1079 – the year the New Forest was designated a royal hunting ground, primarily to provide Norman kings with somewhere to pursue and kill deer which appears to have been their favoured leisure activity. Having fun was often unsophisticated and violent; and back then, the notion of ‘fun’ didn’t feature in many people’s lives. If for example you were a peasant trying to make a meagre living off of the Forest, and got caught killing a deer to feed your family, the penalty could be the loss of a hand, and in a worse case scenario, an unpleasant hanging.

Even kings didn’t have it all their own way. On 22nd of August 1100 King William (Rufus) – the son of William Conqueror – was hit in the chest by an arrow and killed outright. There is a stone to commemorate the event, although even the briefest of research indicates that this was no more than an 18th Century vanity project, and the original site remains to this day, uncertain.

Beauileu Road pony sales some time during the 1990s, but that doesn't really matter - not a lot has changed over the years apart from ladies hairstyles. It was just such a local named Purkis that found and hauled the kings body to Winchester. Purchase is a local name and until fairly recently there was a butchers shop run under that name in Brockenhurst.
Beauileu Road pony sales during the 1990s, the exact date doesn’t really matter because other than women’s hairstyles not a lot else has changed over the years. For generations locals have been coming here on a yearly basis to sell their ponies. Around 900 years ago it would have been just such a local who found and hauled William Rufus’s body to Winchester; we know his name was Purkis, a common surname in the Forest, and until fairly recently there was a Purkis  butchers shop in Brockenhurst.

So, a peasant called Purkis slung the king’s body onto a cart and transported it to nearby Winchester  – those were the days! The Normans reigned through a time when history was really happening in the area, much of it of their own making. To have a king shot more or less on your doorstep must have been quite something, but when all the excitement died down, the Forest subsided back into its usual state of Snoozeville and nothing much else happened over the centuries until the arrival of the M27. However, if you had been a biologist back at the time when the New Forest was founded (admittedly long before biologists existed) and could magically have lived for a thousand years, you’d certainly have noticed a great many changes in the formation of the landscape we see today.

'Forest' might seem an odd description for a place with so much open heathland, but there is a timeless quality here. This might have been taken during the Middle Ages, but sadly bak then there were no cameras to show exactly how it looked.
‘Forest’ might seem an odd description for a place with so much open heathland, and despite its man made origin there is a timeless quality to the landscape. This picture might have been taken during the Middle Ages, but back then of course, there were no cameras to show exactly how it might have looked.

When I was a child this agreeable place was crown-land managed by the Forestry Commission and that’s the way things would remain until 1st March 2005 when the Forest transitioned into the smallest National Park in the country, a status initially unpopular with many locals, but under different management livestock grazing became a priority (not that it was’t a major consideration before); this would be of great benefit to the commoners (the locals who live here) who for centuries have exercised their right to graze stock on the open forest.

When kings began to find more interesting things to do than take pot shots at deer, forestry quickly became the key activity and the woodlands would soon provide an important source of timber – in particular the provision of oak trees for the building of naval ships. Enclosure (usually referred to as Inclosure) of wooded areas to protect trees from grazers, started under the reign of Elizabeth I, a procedure that became more rigorous during the 1700s and was further refined as time passed. Over the years there have been periods when trees have been the priority and periods when they have not – and the same might also be said of the grazing of livestock and the management of deer.

Besides livestock, a great many deer graze within the Forest. Fallow are though to have been introduced by the Romans and they remain very successful.
Along with commoners animals, there are  a great many deer grazing upon the Forest. Fallow are though to have been introduced into Britain by the Romans and remain consequential modellers of the landscape.

In the early 1850s there was an attempt to get rid of the deer altogether with the passing of  ‘The Deer Removal Act’ – no doubt the Norman kings must have been turning in their graves; but clearly the policy didn’t achieve its longterm aim, although it did herald the modern period of silviculture that the Forestry Commission has carried through to the present day.

Clearly The Forest has seen a rollercoaster of changes, but from our modern viewpoint of rapid economic growth, this interesting mix of woodland, heaths and open lawns seems to have hardly changed at all, and from a layman’s point of view it is an ancient place that has been standing still for centuries.

Classic New Forest Heathland during summer as it was at the end of the 1990s as ponies come to a lone holly tree to seek shelter.
Ponies seek out a lone holly tree for shade on a hot sunmer’s day towards the end of the 20th Century.

There have always been many different opinions as to how the New Forest should be run and the resulting issues are wide ranging: is there too much grazing or too little (sadly, I’ve never witnessed too little!). Other considerations include commoners rights, shooting, horse riding, bike trails, heather management  (burn it or cut it, and then how frequently), deer culling, tourism, nature conservation… the list goes on; and with so many interested parties, co-ordinating management is a nightmare, especially when the pressures on the Forest are ever increasing.

In total, the New Forest covers about 25 square miles, and considering all that is expected of it, this is is not a very extensive area.  Its borders now end abruptly, which wasn’t the case when I was a child. Rapid urbanisation and population growth to the east and west have squeezed it, and this is one of the reasons the New Forest is now such an important recreational area. Add to this how accessible the Forest has become in the last fifty years. The M27 (developed during the 1970s) ripped through its heart as devastatingly as the arrow that ripped through Rufus, with its ‘straight as an arrow’ functionality in stark contrast to the narrow backroads that meander through other regions of the Forest, many of which haven’t changed for years.

During winter conditions can be harsh even for hardy New Forest ponies - but it is wet and cold rather than dry and cold that really gets to them.
During winter conditions can be harsh even for hardy New Forest ponies – but it is continuous wet weather rather than cold weather that really gets them down.

Changes.

I returned for a visit the New Forest a few weeks ago; living as I do on the west coast of North America I haven’t spent much time in the area since leaving Britain in 2002, which has been rather useful, because it is easier to notice changes that I might otherwise have missed had I continued to wander the Forest on a daily basis.

Prior to leaving Britain I was frequently out there filming wildlife films for television, along with videos of the area. Sometimes I would just wander through for pleasure, but I rarely did so without a camera, which over the years has resulted in the taking of thousands of photographs, in particular during the last quarter of the 20th Century – this period became the subject of a book – but more importantly it is pictures that have provided a reliable method of making comparisons of change.

The Landcacpes of The New Forest. A look at the seasons of the Forest over the last twenty five years of the 20th Century.
The Landscapes of The New Forest looked back at the seasons of the Forest over the last twenty five years of the 20th Century (first edition only and now out of print).

 Since my childhood I’ve observed visitor numbers steadily rise on the open forest, and this is especially noticeable during holiday periods, but in general I’ve avoided photographing this aspect of life – even I am locked into my own interpretation of how the Forest should be – essentially devoid of people. People will occasionally get in the way of a decent photograph, but few wander very far from the car parks and their presence is easy to ignore, although of course there is a bigger picture to consider – one that involves increasing pressures upon the landscape. 

An Image used for one of videos and a DVD's on the New Forest.
An image used for the cover of one of my videos/DVDs – ‘An English Forest’ which was available around the Millennium.

So, is it an increase in visitor numbers that has caused the Forest to become so blighted by litter? The very first scene I filmed for the B.B.C was a seemingly timeless view across a pond, but when I viewed the result, there was a Coke can bobbing in the lower left hand corner of the frame which meant I had to go back and film the scene again. This was embarrassing, because even an exceptional liar would find it difficult to deny the presence of something once it has been recorded on film or video; but the fact is, having litter in your frame of view was a far less common event back in the mid-1970s than it is today.

I never made this mistake again, and since then, havealways carefully checked the frame of view before making a picture. Increasing New Forest litter isn’t then a matter of opinion, or a false memory of better times; it is a judgement that can be empirically measured by the time it takes to clean up before going all happy snappy with the camera. Thirty years ago, clearing up litter before taking a photograph wasn’t a prime consideration… and now it is.

A certain percentage of the population will always be morons - and when visitor numbers goes up inevitably the litter count increases. In this case at least the discard bottle is green, so should this be a little less disturbed - I don't think so.
A certain percentage of the population will always be morons, and when visitor numbers go up inevitably the litter count increases. In this case at least the discarded bottle is green.  Should this then be a little less disturbing?…  I don’t think so.

A bottle in a natural area will often provide a tomb for small creatures that once in cannot escape.
A bottle in a natural area will often provide a tomb for small creatures – once they have found their way in, many cannot get out and the process of dying is often prolonged and unpleasant.

On the 29th April 2016 I parked my car in a New Forest car park ignoring the obvious litter in the immediate vicinity and walked along the roadside noting the spread of rubbish to as far as about five metres from the carriageway. There was clearly no shortage of the stuff, but it dropped off as I moved towards the heathland, which suggested that most of it was flung from moving cars, but even at a distance way past the range of an Olympic javelin thrower there was still plenty of rubbish to be found strewn across the open heath.

It is great to see such variety, which suggests that litter may not be attributable to particular groups - when it comes to a drinking there seems to be something out there for every taste. All of these were photographed within about 20 minutes of walking plus a whole lot else, which suggests that there is a problem.
It is just great to see such a variety of taste, which suggests that litter may not be attributable to particular sections of society – when it comes to drinking there is something here for everybody. All of these beverage containers were photographed during a 20 minute walk and there was a whole lot else thrown down as well, which indicates that there is a real problem.

One of the reasons that I wanted to leave Britain was litter, because it was almost impossible to ignore, as was the response of foul language and abuse that I usually received when I politely asked people to pick up what they had discarded  – this most noticeably from children… which was depressing.

When my family and I moved to New Zealand in 2002, one of the best things about the change was that litter was less a feature of the N.Z. landscape than it was in Britain, and you might reasonably consider this to be down to a lower population… but it was more than that; in New Zealand there was a different attitude – people were actively searching out bins to put their rubbish in, and throwing rubbish onto the ground didn’t come naturally to that many people. The one time I did ask a child to pick up his discarded rubbish when walking along a street in the small town of Te Awamutu he did so at once, if rather sheepishly, and then apologised – which really stuck in my mind because this had never happened before. Living on the opposite side of the world away from what I considered a cultured society, I suddenly discover that what I might initially have considered to be the back end of nowhere was altogether more civilized than what I had become used to in Britain, and this was a real culture shock.

Back on the Forest I'm still finding litter. Fast food packaging forms a major part go it, and judging by how washed out these containers are some have been out on the open heath for some time.
Back on the Forest I’m still finding litter and fast food packaging forms a major part of it. Judging by how washed out these containers are it is clear they have been out on the open heath for some time.

I’ve lived in Canada now for about six years, and it would be crazy to suggest that Canadians don’t litter, but they don’t do it to anything like the degree that some people do in the U.K.. The writer and humorist David Sedaris has written and talked about littering in Britain and believes heavy fines would make a difference. By his own admission Mr Sedaris is disturbed by this oddly British problem, and some might say he is a little obsessive judging by the amount of time he is prepared to spend picking it up. He is a native of the U.S.A. but has lived elsewhere and travelled extensively – he clearly knows what he is talking about and Britain is lucky to have him.

When I lived in the U.K. I used to walk to the letterbox at the end of the road and I’d pick up all the litter on one side of the road going down and pick up the rest on the opposite side coming back. My neighbours thought I was barking mad, but to me it just seemed the responsible thing to do. If I was now living close to the Forest I’d take a bin liner out with me once a week and pick up as much as I could during my walk.

There was witty litter on the open Forest as well. The only bramble I saw where once it was extensive - maybe the aroma puts the grazers off.
There was witty litter on the open Forest as well. The freshener was attached to the only bramble I saw where once it was extensive – maybe the aroma puts grazing livestock off.

Fining people isn’t going to solve the problem in out of the way places where they are unlikely to be watched . Littering is a mind set in Britain and many won’t readily change their behaviour with good grace, and so sadly, it falls to the rest of us to clean up if local authorities are not going to do it, because littering will only get worse if we decline to rise to the challenge.

When I was regularly using the New Forest as a subject for my photographs I had no trouble clearing up litter when I saw it – and I don’t think it unreasonable to suggest that if you walk your dog on the Forest then you should consider doing the same. Anybody who walks on the open forest regularly should be  prepared to occasionally take a bag out and pick stuff up.

I have no problem with dog owners on the Forest, I owned dogs myself and they often accompanied me... when I wasn't filming deer!
I have no problem with dog owners on the Forest, I had dogs myself and they often accompanied me on photgraphic outings. If people are happy to pick up their dogs faeces, picking up a bit of  litter really shouldn’t be too much of an ask.

 There are people who expect to find a bin wherever they go – even in the natural world – and when they don’t, they find it acceptable to discard their rubbish wherever they are. I have no idea what must be going through their pea sized brains… but I suspect very little.

The discarding of rubbish when the bins run out isn’t a problem restricted entirely to Britain. I am presently in Mexico photographing parrots in what I consider a remote place, but of course it isn’t remote to the locals who live here. Today I’ve walked along a gravel road and it is this which allows easy access by vehicle to a swimming hole on a river that runs parallel to it and it is close to there that I am taking pictures.

I am having trouble photographing orange fronted parakeets in the gloom of the canopy above me.
Looking up into the gloom of the canopy above, I am attempting to photograph orange fronted parakeets preening.

The locals say they live in paradise, but at ground level almost directly beneath were the parrots are preening it is a different story.
But look down and things are very different. This is an area that even local people call paradise. Less that twenty metres to my left there is a pile of rubbish steadily building day by day. There is no bin here because other than a parking area this is essentially a natural setting.

Rather than take their litter home, people are steadily adding to the pile – its very presence seems to have validated this as a place to dump. The rubbish might at some stage be cleared by a local authority, but in the meantime it will take only one windy day to redistribute this junk into the river and surrounding forest and that is depressing, because in every other respects this is paradise.

Look carefully on the other side of the rocks the redistribution of litter is already happening along the river.
Just over the rocks is the river and if you look carefully you will notice the redistribution of junk has already started in particular light polystyrene.

In another location walking out of the beautiful coastal town of Yelapa, litter dutifully goes into bags along the track, but litter reappears by the riverside once into the countryside where the collection bags run out.
In an entirely different location walking out of the beautiful coastal village of Yelapa, litter dutifully goes into bags along the trackway and the area remains very clean, but further on, once out into the coutryside, the collection bags run out, and litter soon begins to appear along the riverbank.

I hate to be critical of Mexico because it is such a wonderful place, but it does have a litter problem, although of course I’m selecting by recent experience. The truth is, that with just a few exceptions, littering is a worldwide problem.

It seems that no matter where we are, when the bins run out, so does our restraint. To see piles of rubbish elsewhere in the world certainly puts the New Forest problem into perspective, but the pertinent question remains, in a place where there is no shortage of wealth and education… should we be seeing litter there at all?