Herself and I were sitting quietly having a drink outside, on a corner of decking that drops five feet into a dell with long and short grass, falling away (boggily in winter) to a stream in a deepish ditch, with woodland beyond, quite tall Corsican pines and oaks, about 30 or 40 yards away.
There were two adult deer grazing in the long grass by the stream. With them was a chocolate-coloured, shiny little fawn that galloped away from them up the hill and came stotting along in our direction - jumping with all four feet simultaneously and the body held rigidly horizontal. It had obviously just learned the technique and was practising it, in an almost mawkishly cute Bambi-like way.
Fetched up just below us, ten or fifteen feet away. It saw us laughing at it and went stotting away back down to its elders, looking more bashful than alarmed. None of them showed any alarm. Soon the fawn leapt the stream and went jumping off into the wood, its elders stepping after it.
Dogs stot sometimes to see where they are going in tall grass. Herself tells me deer do it to look big and threatening to other deer.
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Interesting use of the word. In Scots ( particularly Glaswegian ) slang to "stot" is to "bounce" as in a ball against a wall for example, so not so far removed from the meaning applied to your your deer. To "stot" someone in Edinburgh though is to hit them but particularly by bashing your head into theirs. " Ah stoated him guid an' proaper 'ken." Which is sort of different. A "Glasgow kiss" is an Edinburgh "Stot", just in case you ever feel the urgent need to threaten an inhabitant of either city with summary retribution you wouldn't want to confuse the issue by using the wrong terminology now would you?
You make me jealous with your description though AC. We used to get deer in our garden when we lived in the Scottish Borders. We see a duck or two now which have wandered off the canal but nothing so pleasing as deer.
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Dear me, I thought it must be something that happens on nudist beaches!
One always feels privileged when a wild animal goes about its business unconcious of nearby humans. And more so if it doesn't immediately run off in panic, but just for a fleeting few moments accepts one as an equal.
Last edited by: Cliff Pope on Wed 26 Jun 13 at 18:19
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By dint of spending all their pensions on food for them, my aunt and uncle have got numerous wild birds and some red squirrels, famously shy, to the point where they can walk around nearby without upsetting them. They weren't trying to tame them, it just got to the point where they didn't mind when he went to reload the feeders.
I stood and looked a red in the eye from about 10 feet, with no cover, for a good half minute before it scarpered.
I think the chuffinches in particular are getting a bit fat, to be honest!
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All the blackbirds in our garden are feeding young. Normally very shy, they walk around you with worms/grubs in their mouths.. too busy and intent on feeding to be scared of mere humans.
If we were cats -or had cats - they might be less bold. But at present it's a magical time for us .
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>> I thought it must be something that happens on nudist beaches!
If you're camping in the summer and the attractive girl in the next tent tells you that because it's so hot she will be sleeping with her flaps open, it's not necessarily an invitation to casual sex.
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It always amuses me to see a Springer do it in tall grass, their ears tend to be going up when the dog's going down, their jowls flap and they look totally daft.
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My local supermarket sells packs of bread rolls called 'mini stotties'. Actually they are huge. Too large even for your average burger. I've never come across the word before then.
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Our local sells cheese stotties......Probably like LL's but with cheese baked into them.
Make a nice big picnic sarnie.
Talking of wildlife, I had Squirrel at a barbecue on Saturday. Came in sausage form.
Possibly a bit rich for me...but not unpleasant.
Ted
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>> My local supermarket sells packs of bread rolls called 'mini stotties'. Actually they are huge.
>> Too large even for your average burger. I've never come across the word before then.
I've only seen stotties in the north east, Newcastle way. I hadn't realised they had spread -
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stottie_cake
with assistance from Greggs, Morrisons, and Waitrose, who presumably thought it was something halfway between ciabatta and foccacia.
I've been making barm cakes today. Lancs. thing I think (I from t'other side). In my bit of God's own county we had oven bottom cakes and teacakes, (not the fruited ones. They were sensibly called currant teacakes), none of yer rolls or baps.
I can remember my first encounter with "filled rolls" in Jockland. Looked like ham teacakes to me.
Last edited by: Manatee on Wed 26 Jun 13 at 23:24
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>> I've only seen stotties in the north east, Newcastle way. I hadn't realised they had
>> spread -
>>
>> en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stottie_cake
I spent a summer working in a hotel in Windermere - 1991 it was. Just around the corner there was a small take-away called "The Stottie Shop", which baked its own stotties and deployed them as part of the most delicious hot meat sandwiches I've ever tasted. Despite my mother's family being from Northumberland, I'd never heard the term and assumed it was a Lakeland thing. But perhaps they do originate on the other coast, or maybe it's a "Toon" thing, Mum's folks are (were) miners from a bit further up.
I often wonder wistfully if that shop still operates.
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Well done, Ted! Glad to see it's still going. I hope it's as good as it was, if so it's highly recommended.
The link reminded me that it was, of course, Bowness in which I worked that summer. I always call it Windermere, which is wrong of course.
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Bowness on Windermere................I call it.
Delivered a large yacht there once. It was going up for sale by the boss of a local firm. It was on it's own trailer which his staff had fettled in advance for me to collect.
Fettled ?...schmettled ! It lost a wheel on the M61 which bounced across the road and hit the front of a truck ! Fortunately it was a four wheel trailer. The problem was that the fettlers had used hubs from a twin wheel Transit and the single wheel fitted didn't tighten against the drum, although the wheelnuts tightened on the thread. By good chance, the owner had insured it and by even gooder chance, the truck it hit had the same insurers.
I earned me stottie lunch that day !
Ted
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>> 'Pronking' in Afrikaans.
Does it mean something else, 'prancing' perhaps, in Afrikaans or Dutch? I wouldn't know but it seems to make sense.
I don't know the etymology of stotting and haven't looked it up. Perhaps it's rare in the meaning I have used. Seemed authentic to me first time I heard it.
It isn't in the shorter Oxford in that meaning. A stot is defined as an ox or steer.
Herself says she remembers David Attenborough using it to describe stotting by wildebeest.
Last edited by: Armel Coussine on Wed 26 Jun 13 at 23:04
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Being Northumbrian I have recollections that the word 'stotting ' was used for bouncing as in stotting a football....but if I upset my mother she would get stotting mad.....
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So 'stotting' seems to be a popular or demotic word meaning repeated bouncing which has become attached to this behaviour by deer (apparently sheep do it too).
Ian and Dutchie haven't answered my query on the meaning of 'pronking', which seems to suggest prancing... apparently that word, pronking, is used here by some deer hunters, but it must have come from a Southern African or Dutchman surely?
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"to show off, strut, or prance", Armel, from the Afrikaans.
Much used in the left-footed local community as well - where an Englishman would use 'flounce' or 'mince'.
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So whatever happened to 'Hello Sailor'?
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>> "to show off, strut, or prance"
Thanks Ian... thought so.
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>> Herself and I were sitting quietly having a drink outside, on a corner of decking
>> that drops five feet into a dell with long and short grass, falling away (boggily
>> in winter) to a stream in a deepish ditch, with woodland beyond, quite tall Corsican
>> pines and oaks, about 30 or 40 yards away.
Why not man up and just tell us you've got a ha-ha around your estate!
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>> you've got a ha-ha
Tee-hee... just a boggy-in-winter dell cleared of actual trees between us and the encroaching jungle.
'I don't like it Carruthers... they're too quiet...'
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I thought stotting was the new dogging :-)
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>> Herself tells me deer do it to look big and threatening to other deer.
Got that wrong, my fault. She said (quoting David Attenborough) that wildebeest stot to show predators that they are big and strong with sharp hooves.
I guess ordinary deer just do it out of joie de vivre. The fawn seemed to be doing that.
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I like the way you wrote that A.C.The start of a short story book.Must be very nice where you live.
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It is Dutchman. We are lucky.
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>> guess ordinary deer just do it out of joie de vivre.
No, they must have a better, more material reason. Probably a similar one too: stotting is a sign of strength, a gratuitous display of muscularity and rigidity (with sharp hooves at the bottom).
What predators do deer have in this country other than dogs and humans though? A fox might get an undefended newborn, but it would have to be hungry to try even the one we saw.
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Don't forget, AC, that Britain has been an island only since the ice receded about 7,000 years ago. That's the blink of an evolutionary eye, so our deer still have most of the genes and associated behaviours that evolved while they still had bears and (especially, I suspect) wolves to contend with. Anything that persuades a wolf that there's an easier meal elsewhere is going to improve your DNA's chance of passing to the next generation.
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I think that would be it WDB, yes.
Trust you to know eh comrade?
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Much more recent than that, WDB.
Only 1,000 years go the Picts were drawing European brown bears on their stones in Scotland.
www.pictishstones.org.uk/pictishstones/pictishstoneshome/aboutthepicts/society/symbols.htm
I've seen it suggested that the few hundred years we have been catching fish with a rod and line isn't long enough to breed-in a natural fear of a line snaking across the water - compared with the fear of bears.
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Stotting - Runfer D'Hills
