Water Deer Behaviour - Vocalisation
The analysis of vocalisation is challenging. Attribution of meaning to vocalisations is even more complex, particularly when the call is heard in isolation. It is probable, for example, that any given vocalisation can have different meanings according to the circumstances in which it's uttered and the accompanying body language. Neil Middleton, Stuart Newson and Huma Pearce provide an excellent review of the challenges involved in capturing and analysing mammal calls in their 2024 Pelagic monograph Sound Identification of Terrestrial Mammals of Britain and Ireland. Indeed, I am indebted to Neil and Stuart for allowing me copies of some of the water deer calls they recorded to use in this section as the quality of their recording equipment far surpassed my own.

Scientists generally classify sound into high, medium (mid-), and low frequencies based on the number of oscillations in it. In other words, the number of times the sound cycles/repeats per second. The greater the number of these oscillations, measured in units called hertz (Hz), the higher the frequency and vice versa. Typically, any sound up to about 500 Hz is low frequency, that between 500 and 2,000 Hz is medium frequency, and anything above 2,000 Hz is high frequency, although these ranges shift a little depending on who you're asking. The highest most humans can hear is about 20 kHz (i.e., 20,000 Hz). We register changes in the frequency of a sound as variation in its pitch and, drawing parallels with music, low frequency is bass and high frequency is treble.
Sound moves through a medium -- air, water, soil, and so forth -- as a pressure wave, and energy is lost (dissipated or attenuated) on every cycle. This means that high frequency sounds, which have a lot of cycles per second, don't travel as far as low frequency ones, because they lose energy more quickly. Consequently, in general, animals use high frequency vocalisation when up close, such as a mother calling its offspring or during combat, while low frequency calls are better suited to long distance communication. On the basis of the aforementioned categories, my experience has been that water deer vocalise in the mid- to high frequency range and, to the best of my understanding, do not generate sounds above 20 kHz (i.e., ultrasonic). Their vocalisations can be of low or high amplitude (volume), with higher amplitude (louder) calls travelling several tens of metres.
In line with their limited sociality, water deer are not particularly vocally diverse or prolific mammals, although they do produce several distinctly different calls. Males are probably the more loquacious sex, and mature bucks can be reasonably vocal during the rut, both while courting females and chasing rivals. Unfortunately, we know very little about how often does may vocalise to their offspring, or vice versa, and no attention has been directed to understanding the vocal anatomy of the species, meaning we do not yet have empirical data on how any of the calls are produced in either sex.
For the purposes of simplicity, I have divided the types of call made by water deer into four broad categories: alarm, aggressive/agonistic, social, and distress. Please note that in all spectrograms, the x-axis (horizontal) is time in milliseconds, while the y-axis (vertical) is frequency in Hz.
Alarm
Alarm calls are probably those most heard from this species and there is only one of which I'm aware: barking. Barking can be used in both an admonitive and social context and is observed from about three and a half months old, although some fawn screams may be barking precursors (see: Distress). When directed at a source of disturbance, the bark is short and has a distinct and somewhat harsh "wow" or "no" sound that is reminiscent of the contact bark of the red fox. Ron Harris and Ken Duff, writing in their 2009 book Wild Deer in Britain, described the bark as more prolonged than that of other species, such that "it becomes almost a wail". Barks are uttered in a "bark train", a series of barks repeated over a protracted period and with pauses between barks that may reflect the perceived danger. Deer of both sexes and all ages, bar very young fawns, issue alarm barks, and they may do so standing or resting, according to the significance of the disturbance. I have never seen a deer bark while fleeing, nor while grooming or resting and/or ruminating as Stefan Stadler reported during his studies at Whipsnade.
In his Ph.D. thesis, Stadler gave the average interval between barks as four seconds, the longest bark train consisting of 105 barks that lasted for seven minutes. Richard Champion, also at Whipsnade, reported that the longest bark train during his M.Sc. study lasted five minutes and comprised 34 barks. More recently, Xin-Xin Tian and colleagues recorded the maximum number of consecutive barks to be 83 during their field observations in Songjiang, reported in their 2012 paper to the Chinese Journal of Zoology. In my experience, each bark has a duration of about 700 to 800 milliseconds (ms), and the train lasts for several seconds with each bark uttered 1 to 1.6 seconds apart during the peak of disturbance. The frequency range of the bark is wide, between 300 and 8,000 Hz in my experience, with the energy concentrated between one and three kilohertz. In a bark train, the peak frequency and amplitude of each bark may vary according to the deer's state of ease. As the source of danger moves away, or the deer attains a comfortable flight distance, the intensity of the barks reduces and the duration between barks protracts. The effect is a "tailing off" of the barking event over several seconds, with the barks softening and becoming more widely spaced.
A water deer issuing an alarm bark in Norfolk. Note how the frequency of the bark changes over time as the deer becomes less alarmed by the disturbance. - Credit: Stuart Newsome
At Whipsnade, Stadler recorded deer barking at unfamiliar humans and vehicles. I have been barked at by water deer both in captivity and the wild, but have never observed them to bark at a vehicle. As mentioned in the sociality section, the impact of a barking animal's alarm on those in the vicinity is difficult to predict. During their study, Tian and his team observed that barking often continued after other individuals had left the area, indicating it was aimed at the predator/disturbance and not intended as an alert to other group members. In most cases I have observed, the neighbouring deer respond in one of three ways; they look, they flee, or they ignore the barking individual. Stadler documented the same three responses and documented several cases of was social solicitation - i.e., another deer joined in. My experience aligns with Stadler's that a barking deer may flee for a few tens of metres before stopping and checking the source of disturbance again and, if no further risk is perceived, go back to feeding.

A final observation on barking behaviour is that I have noticed water deer will sometimes "flash" their ears while barking - i.e., turn their ears back and rotate them quickly forward during the vocalisation. This happens very quickly, in only about one-third of a second. I have also observed that at the end of a bark, at the inhale, there is sometimes a mouthful of air taken, resulting in puffed-out cheeks.
Aggression/Agonistic
Probably the primary aggressive "call" made by water deer is a curious-yet-intense high-pitched click-like noise that has an almost metallic (sometimes even wooden) quality, called whickering, chittering or chirruping. (I'm choosing to call it primarily whickering on this site because it sounds highly aggressive and is used in times of what appear to be aggression or frustration, while chittering is often used in playful social situations in mammals. To my ear, it sounds reminiscent of clave percussion.) Stadler noted that in four cases a territorial male chittered in apparent frustration at a doe that refused to move when he approached in a sexual manner; I and other authors have also noted it during mating chases with females (see below). Whickering seems, however, to be employed most often as an aggressive call, typically generated by a dominant buck while chasing or fighting a rival during the rut. To the best of my knowledge, this noise is unique to water deer, although Stadler commented on how it shares similarities with a call made by musk deer (Moschus spp.). Indeed, during his three-year study in India's Kedarnath Wildlife Sanctuary, Michael Green described male deer making a "non-vocal metallic rustling noise", akin to the buzzing of telegraph wires or a peacock fanning its tail feathers, which is vaguely like whickering.
The whickering (also referred to as chirruping or chittering) made by water deer bucks during aggressive encounters. - Credit: Stuart Newsome
The whickering (chirruping/chittering) of a water deer buck slowed to half-speed. - Credit: Marc Baldwin
In my experience this sound is typically composed of between two and eight (five in most of my recordings) waveform elements produced in rapid succession (i.e., every 200 to 300 milliseconds). Each chitter lasts for between 100 and 240 ms, with, again based on my recordings, about 0.012 to 0.015 ms separating each element. The frequency range seems to cover 2 to 9 kHz, with much of the energy at the top end of this range, at between 2.5 and 3.4 kHz. One whicker I recorded, made by what appeared to be a frustrated male pursing an unreceptive doe at Whipsnade in December 2021, had a less distinct waveform; the initial whicker was followed 51 ms later by what I can only describe as a "rattle" lasting about 200 ms, repeated 1.3 seconds later, and then by a squeak. Squeaks tend to be a sign of (sexual) excitement in bucks, which may account for their occasional inclusion during agonistic interactions. Indeed, during July 2023, I observed a deer run up to another that had been feeding nearby and chase it vigorously a couple of hundred metres across the field before breaking off and feeding. During this chase there was squeaking that I typically associate with an amorous buck pursing a doe during the rut, but the chase had the appearance of a buck chasing a rival and was too early to be associated with breeding activity.

The whicker is unexpectedly loud, audible from up to about 150 metres (500 ft.) away in my experience, and although its method of production is unknown it has been suggested the teeth may be involved. Writing in 1945, the 12th Duke of Bedfordshire wrote that it was "possibly produced by clicking the tusks in some way", but Stadler's observations cast doubt on this. At Whipsnade, one eight-month-old buck was heard to make a (albeit slightly softer) whickering noise while "dancing" with another juvenile, its tusks no more than a centimetre (0.4 inches) long and immobile. Similarly, bucks with broken tusks make the sound and, in their 1998 Mammal Society booklet, Arnold Cooke and Lynne Farrell mention that females whicker very occasionally, despite not typically grow long tusks. Andrew De Nahlik, in Management of Deer and their Habitat, published in 1992, suggested the clicking was "probably produced by a rapid contact between the canine teeth and the teeth of the lower jaw", while Stadler noted that, in other species, clicking appears to be produced by the molars. In his Ph.D. thesis on the ecology of musk deer, Green described the lower jaw vibrating when this noise is produced, which might indicate teeth being engaged. Given that dominant bucks will whicker frequently during the rut, both day and night, one might expect their molars to exhibit greater wear were they the origin for the noise, but the stalkers with whom I've discussed this have never observed any difference in tooth wear between mature bucks and does. Whatever the source, the noise appears to be more mechanical than vocal in nature.

In his 1982 paper to Zeitschrift für Säugetierkunde, Francois Feer described bucks approaching one another during a fight emitting a "trille aigüe", a sharp or high-pitched trill. He doesn't provide any further details, but I interpreted this to be whickering.
Solicitation/sociality
Despite not being a particularly social species, water deer have evolved several vocalisations that appear to transmit information to one another. These can be broadly grouped into three types: long distance communication, sexual interest, and mother-infant communication. In addition, Raymond Chaplin told me that with the captive buck ("Max") and does ("Pippa" and "Becky") in his garden they never heard anything that was more than "a murmuring during socialising - just social chat", with nothing like barking that you hear with other deer, but this is the only report of "murmuring" I have come across.
I've mentioned above that water deer bark when alarmed, which other individuals are quite likely to ignore, but they also appear to bark to each other in a manner that seems to foster a response. My experience has been that such contact barking is most prevalent during the summer, particularly at night. Likewise, although he didn't quantify barking at Whipsnade, Stadler considered it most frequent during the summer, and Arnold Cooke and Lynne Farrell observed a similar peak in summertime barking across three years at Woodwalton Fen. Deer on the fen were also more likely to bark during the winter when population was low, and Cooke and Farrell propose that one function of barking is to keep in contact when visual observation is difficult (e.g., when the vegetation is dense, or numbers are few and well dispersed). Writing in their 1983 British Deer Society booklet, the researchers explained:
"The peak period for barking is from June to August and both sexes tend to bark to about the same extent. Barking appears to be the most effective means of intraspecific communication at that time of year when deer are most secretive and when the vegetation in their territories is in its most lush state."
Two water deer apparently contact-barking at one another in Buckinghamshire on a night in July 2018. - Credit: Marc Baldwin
My exposure to contact barks has been limited and mostly at night when I've been unable to observe the deer calling. Nonetheless, this is a softer sounding vocalisation than the alarm bark that, in my experience, has a duration of between about 940 milliseconds and 1.2 seconds. The barks are more irregularly spaced; gaps from one to just over six seconds in three recordings I made in Buckinghamshire overnight, and a fourth during the early morning in June 2016. The early morning recording was of particular interest as I was able to watch, from a hidden position, two deer bark at each other across a field in a pattern reminiscent of conversation - each deer was facing the other and neither looked in my direction at any point while I was observing. These barks were sharper than the contact bark, however, each lasting 600 to 650 milliseconds and more similar in sonography to the alarm bark but with lower volume and the energy seemingly concentrated at between 600 and 2,000 Hz. The harsher sound of this to-and-fro barking could possibly indicate a dispute between the two individuals, although I cannot be certain. At one point the barks overlapped.

While whickering is often heard in an aggressive context, it is also employed in more amorous situations. On one occasion at Whipsnade I heard a buck chitter while chasing a doe, and in an e-mail conversation during 2017, Arnold Cooke told me that "Chittering (whickering, clicking) is heard during a [mating] chase", going on to mention "what I call squeaking, which is a noise made by amorous bucks" following a doe. I have heard bucks squeaking -- described by some authors/observers as a bird-like whistling or plaintive whining -- while in pursuit of females during the rut on many occasions, and in once case a buck produced a couple of squeaks after breaking off a mating pursuit. I presume this is also the "very attractive warble or whistle" that Michael Clark wrote of in his 1981 book, which he had only heard once outside the rut. This is perhaps also the "hiss" that Henri Cap and colleagues give as being made by bucks courting does in their 2008 paper to Cladistics on deer vocal behaviour. (The researchers reference Cooke and Farrell's 1998 Mammal Society booklet Chinese Water Deer as a source for the hiss, but I cannot find any mention of such a noise in the publication.) At Der Grüne Zoo Wuppertal in Germany, Francois Feer heard a "gémit" (groan/moan) made by the buck while excitedly pursuing another individual, presumably a doe, and I take this to be a squeak/whistle. Intriguingly, in his 2006 Collins field guide Wildlife Sounds: Britain and Ireland, Geoff Sample wrote of how "males apparently perform with a whistling call", although he'd never come across anyone who had ever heard it. I'm unsure on what "performing" might represent here, but my impression is he's referring to bucks squeaking/whistling while mating and, if correct, this would be the only such account I've come across of any vocalisation being made during copulation.
Based on videos recorded by Sharon Scott and audio from an automated recording device installed at Buckenham Marshes kindly shared with me by Stuart Newson, the squeaking may continue for protracted periods on and off throughout the day and night, with or without any apparent chittering. I presume squeaking bucks are usually following does around, although in one video of Sharon's taken during December 2022 a buck appeared to be squeaking while patrolling his territory; there was no doe present in this or preceding video clips, and the buck was walking steadily with tail held out as is more commonly seen during patrols. In any case, I have only ever heard this call produced by bucks on the move, and this aligns with Arnold Cooke's experience and Stadler's observations at Whipsnade. Indeed, Stadler suspected that squeaking may help maintain contact between mating partners in the absence of daylight and inform the female of the approaching male's intentions.
In my experience, squeaks are contoured sounds with overtones (i.e., the multiple layers in the spectrograph), which have a duration of about 300 to 450 milliseconds (most of my recordings are 400-450 ms) and a peak frequency range of 550 to 9,400 Hz, the duration shortening as the buck's "fervour" increases. A squeak may be followed by a soft snort or cough of about 150 ms in duration 350 ms or so after the squeak, these presumably being the "snuffles and snorts" that Roy Harris and Ken Duff remark on in their 2009 book Wild Deer in Britain. Stuart Newson's recorders at Buckenham captured snorting/snuffling independently (i.e., unaccompanied by squeaking or chittering), and Sharon Scott's trailcams have picked up what appear to be very excited bucks whose 'squeak train' is punctuated by frequent snorts, rather than snorting being the termination of the chain. A similar squeak (with the snorting) is sometimes issued by the taxonomically similar roe deer.
The excited squeaking of a water deer buck in pursuit of a doe. Note that the squeak becomes increasingly frenetic. - Credit: Sharon Scott
A water deer squeaking and snorting. Based on published accounts, this is likely to be an amorous buck in pursuit of a doe. - Credit: Stuart Newsome
Reports of squeaking/whistling are largely confined to the rut or its prelude, although I have heard squeaking once during an aggressive chase between bucks in July (see: Aggression). During his studies at Whipsnade, the earliest whistle of the season Stadler heard was on 3rd September, about eight weeks before the rut began. Stadler also recorded two examples where a young deer (in one case a buck and in the other a doe) uttered a submissive squeak while running away from an aggressive dominant buck during the peak of the rut of 1988. It remains unknown whether it is typical for retreating animals to issue these submissive squeaks, as their much softer tone means they tend only to be audible at close range. Beyond Stadler's description of the submissive squeak, I've not come across any records of females vocalising towards males either during or outside of the rut. Indeed, most stalkers comment on how water deer bucks can't be called like, for example, roebucks can during the rut. In his poem "Deer Whistle", however, Chinese poet Jidi Majia tells of calling a buck to its death with a doe bleat made with a tree leaf. Additionally, a keepers at Whipsnade who had hand-reared several water deer fawns told me that females will squeak and they had one particular tame female at the park that would squeak excitedly when the keepers entered the enclosure. In November 2024, she sent me a video of courtship behaviour between a buck and doe in the snow (the buck displayed ear-slapping behaviour) that she described as "a male and a female both squeaking to each other".


In his review of ungulate mother-infant relationships, Peter Lent (1974) concluded that the mothers of most hider species "will not approach and make contact with their infant at its hiding place. Rather, they await its emergence from some distance away". Stadler reported a soft whistle from one of his female subjects, which was uttered in the vicinity of the fawn's resting spot (about 12 metres/40 ft. away) and seemed to encourage the youngster to approach and suckle. The whistle was similar to that made by males but lacked the combination with the snort; it included about 10 whistles in a chain with an interval of two or three seconds. It seems likely that the whistle is more common than currently documented owing to the difficulty hearing it, although Raymond Chaplin had close contact with his water deer subjects and didn't observe the females vocalising to the fawns at all. In Management of Deer and their Habitat, De Nahlik described the exchanges between doe and fawn as "roe-like squeaks and bleatings".
In addition to dams softly squeaking to fawns, youngsters may make similar calls. In his 1977 book Deer, Chaplin described how "when exploring the fawns made a soft drawn-out Pee-ouw". Fawns will also call in apparent distress or frustration (see below).

Finally, as discussed above (see: Aggression), while whickering is most frequently a sign of aggression between two bucks, typically produced during chases or fights between males in the rut, it is occasionally also heard in a courtship context. Whickering may be heard at the end of a squeak-snort chain uttered when an amorous buck is pursuing a doe. At the time of writing, I have heard all three sounds together only twice.
An example of two calls being used in sequence during a mating chase. Based on the trailcam footage from which this audio was taken, this was made by a buck pursuing a doe that squeaked and then whickered. While whickering is typically associated with aggression, it may also signify excitement and/or frustration on the buck's part. It should be remembered, however, that both sexes can make both vocalisations and the whickering could potentially have been annoyance on behalf of the female. - Credit: Sharon Scott
An example how difficult it can be to untangle calls based on audio alone. This was recorded on a marsh in Norfolk during the peak of the water deer rut by a standalone audio recorder and the clip contains squeaking, snorting, and whickering, along with splashing that suggests a pursuit of some kind. But there is no corresponding video. It may be that all three calls are being issued by the same animal (e.g., a very excited buck pursuing a doe), or by two individuals (e.g., a buck squeaking and snorting in pursuit of a doe and a doe whickering in annoyance), or there may be a courting pair and a slightly more distant pair of bucks fighting (whickering). - Credit: Stuart Newsome
Distress
Unusually for wild animals, particularly prey species, water deer vocalise when in pain or distress, sometimes without any obvious injury being apparent, and this may continue for a protracted period.
Many who have studied and worked with water deer have described, to use Raymond Chaplin's words, the "coarse scream" made when the animals are captured or trapped. Probably the best description I have come across to-date of this vocalisation is that given by the late Gerald Durrell in his 1973 book Beasts in My Belfry. Durrell recounted trying to catch a buck that had escaped from Whipsnade into a neighbouring chicken pen during the winter of 1945/46. When attempts to net the deer failed, Durrell rugby-tackled the buck as it raced past and managed to restrain it via a back leg. After a few moments of struggling that resulted in some superficial wounds inflicted by the hooves and tusks, the deer suddenly stopped struggling:
"... suddenly, he stopped struggling altogether and started to give vent to the most blood-curdling and piercing screams. He could not have produced a better performance if I had been burning him with a red-hot iron. As it was, I was quite shaken and relaxed my grip considerably, under the impression that I was hurting him, but as we were pushing him carefully into a sack Phil explained that this was the normal way a Chinese water deer accepted his fate.
He lay in the sack still uttering these ear-splitting screams while we collected the nets. Then we put him in the van on top of them and started to drive back to the park. I felt sure that the novelty of driving in the van would make the animal stop, but not a bit of it. We were forced to drive the entire length of the park with these fearsome screams issuing without pause from the back of the van. ... The deer continued to scream unremittingly until we reached the area in which we were to release him. Pig-killing was music in comparison to the noise that this comparatively small animal produced. Eventually, we shook him out of the sack and he stopped screaming. Then two quick bounds and he crouched down in the grass and disappeared."
This is the suspected wail of a water deer. Suspected because it was recorded by a standalone audio recorder without any corresponding video to confirm the subject. Two stalkers and a zoo keeper, all familiar with water deer, have told me they believe this to be a water deer issuing a low intensity scream, although none of the researchers I have played it to (e.g., Arnold Cooke and Raymond Chaplin) have ever heard anything like this from water deer. - Credit: Stuart Newsome
I have never heard the scream myself, so do not have any recording with which to analyse the frequencies, but there are several videos on YouTube showing water deer being rescued from drainage ditches, sinkholes and sewers that include the animals screaming when netted. To my ear, the cry sounds very similar to the squeal of a distressed pig. This vocalisation is presumably what Stefan Stadler classified as a wail, screaming being something that he only documented among fawns. Stadler defined the wail of adult deer as a low to medium pitch vocalisation, lasting five to ten seconds, with little discernible modulation to the human ear and that may continue for 10 minutes. During his audio trapping sessions at Buckenham Marshes in the winter of 2021/22, Stuart Newsome captured what appeared to be a water deer wailing/groaning. The sound was a thready and broken protracted vocalisation, spanning about 500 Hz to 6 kHz, with most of the energy at the bottom end of the frequency range, around 700 Hz. Speaking with one of the keepers at Whipsnade who has experience capturing water deer for tagging and moving, the vocalisation starts loud and coarse, becoming 'thready' as the deer tires. To her ear, the sound was similar to the scream made by hares, and in 1977 Oliver Dansie described the distress call as "a scream like that of a wounded hare". Arnold Cooke and Lynne Farrell, in there 1983 profile of the species described a "screaming high-pitched bark" made when terrified.

Stadler observed deer to wail when in pain and Durrell's account and the videos I've seen suggest that they quite commonly will scream/wail when trapped. Indeed, I'm aware of one case in November 2020 when a water deer became stuck in a flooded ditch, causing it to release a repeated distress call that I can only describe as a "slurring bark" until it was rescued by the landowners. Each 'whelp' lasted 400 to 450 ms and had similarities to the scream/wail, so potentially this is a very flexible vocalisation that varies according to the condition of the caller and its level of distress. Additionally, in his short article in Shooting Times and Country Magazine during March 1982, Bob Lawrence described defeated water deer screaming:
"The chases usually end with the loser evading his pursuer in cover but in one extreme case I witnessed the victor standing over the vanquished which was lying exhausted on his back with all four feet in the air, squealing like a pig."
When distressed a Chinese water deer will sometimes make a "whelp-like" call that sounds like a variation on the contact bark. This individual was caught in a drainage channel on a farm before being rescued by the landowner. - Credit: Sharon Scott
(It is perhaps worth mentioning that a quick search on YouTube will turn up multiple videos labelled as 'water deer screaming' that are in fact alarm-barking animals.)
Stadler described a true screaming in fawns, and this is something mentioned by many other authors. Chaplin noted that fawns uttered "distress cheeps" during tagging, when separated from their mother, or when struggling to suckle. Sharon Scott told me that fawns "squeal like a piglet" if you pick them up, which corresponds with videos I have seen of fawns being rescued from drainage ditches in South Korea, and, writing in 1988, Stadler described how many fawns would let out "a loud scream of varying intensity" when they were caught for tagging. Based on this, and my own experience, it is reasonable to consider that fawns produce two distress calls: a scream and a series of bird-like cheeps or squeaks of varying frequency and duration.
Separation distress "bleat" made by a captive water deer fawn when the keeper left the enclosure. This was accompanied by the fawn throwing itself at the sides of the enclosure trying to follow the keeper. - Credit: Marc Baldwin
The distress scream issued by a newborn water deer fawn collected for tagging. - Credit: Christina Risbridger / Whipsnade Zoo
Fawns tend to scream when captured, and based on audio provided by one of the animal care staff at Whipsnade of a fawn being picked up for tagging, and of a fawn picked up and moved from a drainage ditch in South Korea, the scream is quite protracted and loud, lasting about two seconds and in the range of 1 to 13 kHz, with most energy between 1.7 and 5 kHz. Cheeps/squeaks, by contrast, seem to be produced when the fawn is disturbed and moving and, based on a recording I made of a fawn cheeping while moving to cover having been disturbed from its resting site by haymaking activities and another of four newborn fawns exploring their birth site in South Korea, these vocalisations are between 150 and 280 milliseconds in duration and in the range of about 1.7 to 15 kHz. Additionally, fawns will sometimes produce the "separation cheep" alluded to by Chaplin and described to me by the Whipsnade keeper that was, in their experience and mine, accompanied by the fawn throwing itself at the sides of the enclosure when the keeper left. In the one recording I have of this vocalisation, it ranges between about two and eight kilohertz, and was composed of an initial loud cheep of about 350 ms in duration, followed by a softer squeak lasting 230 ms. Intriguingly, at Whipsnade, Stadler observed that, unlike other deer species, water deer mothers hardly ever approached a screaming fawn.

Finally, Chaplin wrote of fawns making a drawn-out pee-ouw sound at a day old, and this may be a precursor to cheeping, while Stadler described a four-week-old fawn letting out a scream-like vocalisation (i.e., similar quality, but shorter in intensity and shorter durations between individual screams) when disturbed by a car that he considered may have been a precursor to barking.