GrrlScientist is an evolutionary biologist, ornithologist, aviculturist, birder and freelance science and nature writer. A native of the Pacific Northwest, she relocated from Seattle to NYC with her parrots after earning a BS in Microbiology (emphasis in Virology) and PhD in Zoology (Ornithology) from the University of Washington. In NYC, she was the Chapman Postdoctoral Fellow at the American Museum of Natural History for two years, pursuing part of her "dream" research project by reconstructing a molecular phylogeny of the parrots of the South Pacific islands. GrrlScientist and her five parrots are currently relocating to Germany, where she will continue writing her blog while also writing a book and learning German. (Meanwhile, her parrots will continue to nibble on her extensive personal library.) If you appreciate GrrlScientist's writing, you can help pay her living expenses by hiring her to "blog" your conference, speak at your club or write articles for your publication (or by clicking on the Paypal button below). If you read an essay on this blog that you especially enjoyed, please nominate it for inclusion in 
White-tailed buck, Odocoileus virginianus,
with velvety antlers photographed through the bedroom
window at the photographer's farm in eastern Ontario.
As you can see, they're not into mowing the lawn around
their house!
Image: Bev Wigney.
Happy Holidays to everyone.
I am receiving so many gorgeous pictures from you, amigos bonitos, and I am overwhelmed by the beauty of these images and the creatures and places depicted. If you have a high-resolution digitized nature image (I prefer JPG format) that you'd like to share with your fellow readers, feel free to email it to me, along with information about the image and how you'd like it to be credited.
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Comments
Great photo! What a scene to have outside your window.
Is that milkweed? Bev, if you are reading this, do you get monarchs?
Posted by: Torris | December 25, 2006 4:34 PM
What a lovely shot.
Posted by: Basia | December 26, 2006 10:01 PM
Verdure like that must be close to a deer's notion of paradise.
At this stage the antlers look like they could go fork-fork like a mule/blacktail or beam-tine, tine, tine like a whitetail.
It's a strange fact that leg injuries cause antler malformation in several species of deer. For a related interesting, if cruel, experiment check out:
Antler malformation produced by leg injury in white-tailed deer. Oct. 1972. Marburger, R.G., et al. Journal of Wildlife Diseases. 8(4): 311-4.
http://www.jwildlifedis.org/cgi/reprint/8/4/311
Posted by: cfrost | December 27, 2006 5:33 AM
Did you know that there are double the number of deer than there were 100 years ago. They have few predators now. One of the biggest problems they face now is a place to live.
Mimi
Posted by: Mimi | December 27, 2006 8:49 PM
Many of Utah's deer (yes, I know you're probably thinking of other areas, but nonetheless) herds are overpopulated, and the area's hunters are not active enough to keep them down to size. Yet there's still opposition to bringing back wolves, and opposition to allowing mountain lion or bobcat populations to increase to levels that could have some effect on the deer population problem. So most Utah deer die of starvation.
Posted by: llewelly | December 27, 2006 11:53 PM
This is a reply to Torris about the milkweed question up above (sorry not to reply sooner, but I've been busy over the holidays) -- yes, that's Common Milkweed in my garden -- and yes, indeed, we get many Monarchs. This summer, I collected eggs from the leaves and successfully raised, tagged and released almost 50 butterflies. There's quite a bit about the Monarch raising and tagging project on my blog if you're interested in checking it out.
Posted by: bev | December 28, 2006 4:53 PM