Sound the alarm

Jon Snowdon explains the specific purposes of the various different barks of roe deer

- Jon Snowdon

A colleague contacted me last week and told me about a roebuck that had barked at his presence in the wood, only to keep approaching him at a distance of about 30m to take a closer look. On identifying him it ran off, barking continuously. My colleague asked whether this was common.

When this does happen it is always a dramatic encounter for both parties and thrilling for the human. But to answer his question, it is not an everyday occurrence but does happen enough for me not to be surprised he had this experience.

Roe bark at certain times of the year and there are perfectly understandable reasons why it is heard more from spring through to well after the rut. The wood is already reverberating to the sound but in the next few weeks, the woodland is going to come alive with it. Barking is obviously a communication of some sort but who and what are they communicating with and why?

The alarm sound of roe deer tends to be a series of rapid barks with the first usually more prolonged than following barks. If I am trying to imitate a roe deer bark, for want of a better word I use ‘bouffff’. The ‘B’ is produced as a guttural sound from the throat, and the ‘ffff ’ is pronounced without fully closing the lips, as you would when pronouncing a fully elongated ‘ffff ’.

Warning