Water Deer Behaviour - Comfort & Vigilance

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Comfort

The comfort behaviours of water deer are not well studied. Francois Feer reported that does may engage in head-rubbing, particularly rubbing of the ears and posterior parts of the head, which he considered a comforting activity rather than scent-marking behaviour owing to the lack of precision. The behaviour was only rarely observed in the males. At Whipsnade, Stefan Stadler reported both males and females displayed a “self-licking” behaviour when approaching another deer aggressively or parallel walking, describing how:

“The tongue appeared alternatingly on both sides of the mouth at an interval of between 0.5-1.0 seconds. Sometimes exaggerated chewing movements accompanied the behaviour.”

Grooming is an important behaviour and water deer can spend several minutes at a time engaged in it. As well as helping preserve the integrity of their coat, grooming may also be a comforting behaviour and can sometimes be observed after stressful encounters. - Credit: Marc Baldwin

Stadler suggests that this may be a self-reassuring behaviour associated with a highly excited state, which may have its origin in aggression. He also considered grooming to be a comfort activity that was sometimes continued for several minutes. Grooming was most often observed in transition from activity to rest and vice versa such that Stadler could roughly predict a resumption of, or termination of, activity by the onset of grooming behaviour. Does may occasionally engage in mutual grooming (see: Sociality), which is presumably comforting. Scratching and yawning were listed among the comforting activities, as was stretching, which involved lordosis (i.e., the 'hollow back' pose achieved by placing both front feet forwards, turning the head up and pushing the back down) and, at maximum stretch, the tail was raised. Stadler recorded this most often after long periods of inactivity, but also sometimes while feeding.

Several authors describe the ground pawing behaviour common in many deer species ahead of lying down, and I have witnessed this on many occasions. The ground is sniffed and pawed at with one front foot prior to lying down. Typically this “sniff-paw-sniff” behaviour included only a couple of scrapes of the foot before the animal lays down and starts grooming. Stadler recorded that the sniff-paw-sniff-paw cycle would continue for more than a minute on some occasions. The behaviour seems less apparent in areas of open grassland where vegetation is short.

Prior to lying down, water deer will often scrape the ground with one or both forefeet as if to clear loose vegetation. In longer grass, they may spend a minute or so trampling down fronds before lying down. - Credit: Marc Baldwin

Finally, on the evening of 8th December 2022, I received a description of a curious behaviour from Sharon Scott. Earlier that day she had been watching the water deer rut in Buckinghamshire and had seen two larger bucks, in her words, “chasing and pounding” a smaller one who limped off into the long grass and laid down. Shortly afterwards, the vanquished buck was visited by a doe who made what Sharon called “a chattering sound” to him that she took to be comforting. I've never seen or read about anything like this before—either two bucks chasing a third, or the wounded buck-doe interaction—and would be very interested to hear from anyone who has.

Vigilance

Stadler considered females to be the more vigilant sex, being more wary and spending longer watching for potential disturbance. Unsurprisingly, this was strongly seasonal, with females at their most vigilant from May to July, the peak of the fawning period. Two specific surveillance behaviours were recorded by Stadler at Whipsnade: sichern and scanning.

Sichern, pronounced zi-shern, is a German word meaning “to secure” or “safeguard”, and describes an anti-predator behaviour well-known among hoofed mammals that involves a rapid movement of the head into an upright position, neck long, ears pricked up and rotated forwards, body still and an intense stare in direction of the disturbance. This was seen in animals of both sexes and all ages, excluding very young fawns (i.e., those fewer than 36 hours old), although females engaged in it more often than bucks. The alerted deer will continue to stare in this position for several seconds, after which it'll return to whatever it had been doing if no further disturbance is detected, or may continue for several minutes if the stimulus remains. In some cases, I have observed water deer engage in the same 'rapid re-look' described in red deer by Charles Foster in his 2016 book Being a Beast, whereby an alerted deer will look intently for a short period before dropping its head to feed for a few seconds and then rapidly raising it again:

“Then [the hind] puts her head down and continues feeding. The stalker doesn't move, and quite right: a few seconds later the hind whips her head up again and look straight at you. It's an old trick. The first gaze didn't satisfy her. She hopes that if there's anything suspicious it will have thought that she was reassured, will have started to move again, and will be caught by the second look.”

A water deer doe exhibiting "sichern" behaviour, which involves staring intently and sometimes bobbing the head while the ears are pricked and the body remains still. This behaviour is employed when the deer is trying to assess a disturbance to establish whether it is threat. This can continue for several minute and attract the attention of nearby water deer. If the disturbance is considered dangerous, the deer will typically bark and flee. - Credit: Marc Baldwin

About seven times less common than sichern, Stadler described scanning as a more relaxed method of surveying surroundings, not being focused on any particular disturbance. Bucks engaged in scanning more than does and, almost the mirror opposite of sichern, it was significantly more common during the rut than at fawning.