The Spotted deer

[Prajwal J Ullal]

Probably my first post in Mammals' category, a shot for the recent visit to Sanjay Gandhi National Park, Borivli. While me, along with my friends, were strolling along, one of my friend mentioned about a small group of deer lazing around and when we all went by we were welcomed by a group of Spotted deer enjoying an afternoon break and surprisingly were not at all seemed to panic with our presence around them. We initially were a bit cautious for not scaring them off, but later we realized they were just watching us but not eager to leave their spot, nor were they intimidated, so we enjoyed capturing as much close shots as possible, but unfortunately the whole area was covered with dense bushes, so getting a clear shot wasn't a possibility.
Here is one of those shots:

EXIF:
Canon EOS 550D
Canon 55-250IS
F/9
Shutterspeed 1/100
ISO - 400
-1.7 step
Handheld
No crop

Post spending a healthy time around, we left the spot and close to 5 - 10 mins later, while we were roaming around the neighboring areas, we saw these beauties gracefully treating themselves with the lush and vibrant greenery and just disappearing in the bushes

[Sabyasachi Patra]

Good that you got to see the head clearly. Slightly less space at the top and more at the bottom would have helped. It is always better to leave space for the virtual legs. Our brain wants to make the connection that there are legs, else it will feel that the deer is floating in vegetation.

The deers may be habituated to the presence of visitors. Thanks for sharing.

Cheers,
Sabyasachi

[Saktipada Panigrahi]

Nice to see the Chital in velvet amid greenery. Beautiful eyes, white hairs inside the ears well documented. I like your first mammal photo. Wish to see more in future. Thanks for sharing.SaktiWild

[Rajan Kanagasabai]

Hi

Nice view of the habitat. The trick with getting more details on photographs especially when hand holding is to manage a high shutter speed. In this case, you have scope with the Apreture which is at 9. Lowering it to 5.6 or even 4 would have given you a much higher shutter speed and hence more details. I specially loved the eye contact and the composition.

Thanks for sharing

regards
Rajan

[Mrudul Godbole]

Nice sighting of a deer in SGNP. Agree with the above comments. Seems they have become used to humans and so don't get startled. Good eye contact. Thanks for sharing.