Our little Victorian cottage sits at the top of a semi-rural lane which meanders down to the River Chet, with wood, scrub and marsh all around. You’d think, living where we do, our nights would be as silent as the graves in the churchyard next door. Not a bit of it. Even in the depths of winter, we keep our bedroom window slightly ajar and so our country slumber is often serenaded by a cacophony of sounds from the wild things hereabouts. The song of the tawny owl is both soothing and soporific, whereas the screaming of the horny foxes is eerie and bone-chilling. And then there’s the rustling of small rodents as they feed, out of sight of predators. But most recently, a loud barking has been added to the choir.
At first we thought it was a lost dog – our four-legged friends are as popular as mobility scooters around these parts. But it turns out the barking is the call of a randy muntjac deer cruising for a bit of lovin’ in the boggy thicket. An adult muntjac deer is the size of a labrador and sounds a bit like one too.
We have two species of small deer around us – the muntjac and the Chinese water deer, neither of which is native to these islands. Both were imported from Asia by toffs in waxed jackets – for their sprawling country estates. Inevitably, some escaped into the wild and bred like rabbits. And so it’s all dogging in the dark for these horny creatures – just like the human variety in copses and clearings, lay-bys and car parks up and down the land.
Perking the Pansies 
OMG! And they do this at night? Far more interesting than our neighborhood dogs. At times it does make one want to take drastic measures. I just don’t know what they are 😂
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At least here the deer only bark during breeding season. The street dogs in Turkey barked all night, every night. It used to drive us mad 😳
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Oh yeah. Here they usually settle down at night, but the morning when workers are arriving…😐😵💫 we use ear plugs.
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Poor you! 🫨
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I had no idea there were small deer in your area. And still foxes! I’d have thought they’d been hunted to extinction.
Almost no night noise here. The dogs that used to bark incessantly have died off, it seems, and we now have a neighborhood of quiet ones, thank goodness.
I do hear the coyotes howling and yipping sometimes, and there’s a morning serenade of two camps of burros—seven a few blocks northwest of me, and an unknown number a few blocks southeast in Mexico. I love when they call back and forth!
One lone rooster lives a few blocks away. I’m glad he’s no closer! Roosters don’t really seem to understand the difference between dawn and 2AM.
Add in the morning train that runs about a half mile south in Sonora—the perfect distance away. There used to be eight or nine peacocks roaming the area, their call loud enough to make me jump out of my skin if they were nearby. Thankfully they usually called only in the morning.
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You do have an exotic mix of wildlife! I know exactly what you mean about roosters. When we lived in Turkey, it seemed that every other house had chickens. What a racket! 😀
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