Cervus unicolor

At first I was looking for the deer and thought it must be well camouflaged.
I was wondering about putting up records of the Glossy black feeding marks on the Melaleucas, but we didn't really discuss how best to do this on the NatureMapr platform.

Hi Libby, Yeah, very well camouflaged. I doubt one would hang around if I was that close! And re the cockies, that's yellow-tailed blacks that gouge the grubs out of the melaleucas, and glossies that leave the chewed casuarina cones. I say whack up either of them as sightings, as they are both pretty conclusive evidence of the presence of the respective cockies.

Dear Libby and Jacky, The rulings are probably Samba as they have moved from Victoria to Nowra. They can breed with Rusa that originate from Royal NP and have fertile young. I have Chital on our place from a nearby deer farm and they have changed the vegetation by ringbarking small trees and browsing. Very upsetting.

Hi G, Yeah, we have deer passing thru our place too. They love to ringbark Persoonia linearis, which is a damn shame - I've had to put guards on a few, but for some I didn't discover the damage till it was too late. They do seem to be opening things up generally by browsing too. Still don't really know if ours are Sambar, as I had my one photo of an actual animal ID'd by someone from OEH who should know, as a Rusa, apparently now quite widespread as well. I've created a "deer, unknown species" category on ALCW, and I think ALBC too, so perhaps I should move this record to it.

I don't have moderator status for mammals any more, so can someone else confirm this for me please?

Dear Jackie, as far as I know Rusa are only south to Nowra but the problem is they are difficult to differentiate from the larger Samba and as I said before can interbreed with Rusa. Maybe create a category of Samba/Rusa i.e Cervis spp. Keep a watch out for Hog deer as they have spread from Vic to southern NSW. My place has about 600 tree guards to protect plants and more recently I buy 1800mm high ones as the 1500mm were inadequate to stop browsing. They particularly like ficus spp. and use Syzygium australe to rub their antlers. The are the biggest ecological disaster that I have seen in the region.

Yeah, my OEH informant tells me they have been picking up quite a lot of Rusa on cameras recently. See our photo from Brogo at https://atlasoflife.naturemapr.org/Community/Sightings/Details/3400144. When I compared its appearance with the field guides it did look more like Rusa than Sambar, and the photo got run past Andrew Claridge I think, who gave it the tick as a Rusa. I'm thinking leave the unknown deer sp category as is, if you could confirm this sighting as that please? I'm not sure if red/fallow/hog also do ringbarking, but then there's browsing sign and scat too, so it would be easier to log deer evidence if we kept it general. Gee, that's dedication re the tree guards. Not sure I run to that degree of effort, should it become necessary. So far they are concentrating on the Persoonia with an occasional euc, casuarina and wattle sapling done in passing. If only they'd do pittosporum, but so far they don't seem that interested.