Thursday, July 16, 2009

Behold a pale....

.....deer. This is not a white hart as its a doe but still its rather special.

whitedeer

This is one of the herd of white-tailed deer in Venezuela's Hato el Cedral. White deer have long held a role in European mythology. Richard II for example used it in his emblem and as such a white hart appears in the earliest known contemporary portrait of an English king. The white hart also has links to Herne the hunter a famous ghost myth from the Windsor region said to have been gored by one to protect Richard (Herne appears in shakespeare's Merry Wives of Windsor). More importantly the White Hart is a common pub name in the UK. To this day white-coated red deer are considered special - there has been a lot of discussion recently about one on a shooting estate in Scotland and its fate.

whitedeer3

Lest anyone think this is in part a lighting thing the shot below shows the white deer with a normal venezuelan white-tail buck in the background.

whitedeer2

I understand this deer wouldn't be much lighter than some north american white tailed deer populations but with the "normal" buck in the background you can really appreciate the difference.

2 comments:

R.Powers said...

Still pretty light for deer around here too.

We used to see a piebald whitetail occasionally.

jason said...

Wow. Big difference in color. I've seen light and dark and shades in between, but I've never seen one like that. Very cool.