Mule deer
The most numerous large animal on the land, and the reason the mountain lion comes through.
In brief
Odocoileus hemionus, Cervidae, order Artiodactyla.
- Resident, seen all year
- Native to western North America
- Browser
Where it lives
Western North America. The animals here are California mule deer, the subspecies O. h. californicus.
When you see it
All year, most often in the hour after dawn and the hour before dark.
What it eats
Browse rather than grass: deer brush, oak, manzanita, and the young fruit trees whenever a fence fails.
Here
Photographed silhouetted on the ridge, and a doe with a fawn on the road on November 5, 2022. The name is the ears, which are large enough to look borrowed from something else.
A doe and a fawn
On the road on November 5, 2022. The fawn of the year still travels with the doe through its first fall, which is why they are almost always seen in twos at that end of the year.
They come through in numbers
Singles and pairs are the usual sight. In spring they move as a group: this is April 10, 2026, does and a buck together on the road up, at the season when the new grass is worth more than cover.
That is also the arithmetic behind the mountain lion. A lion takes roughly one deer a week, and the herd is the reason it has a reason to be here.
By Yggdrasil Springs
Next in the series
Mountain lion
The cameras catch it through the year. Once in five years, in daylight.
2026-08-28
Black bear
The only bear left in California, on a flag that still shows the other one.
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Western grey squirrel
It buries more acorns than it digs up again, which is one of the ways an oak woodland plants itself.
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Western honey bee
Honey is made on this property. Worth being straight about the bee that makes it: it is not from here.
2026-08-28
Shrew
Not a mouse and not a rodent: an insectivore with a heart past 700 beats a minute and a few hours of tolerance for an empty stomach.
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Grey fox
The only dog in the Americas that climbs trees, and it does it to get away from the other dogs.
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Twelve-spotted skimmer
Three black spots on each wing, and the white ones between them mean it is a male.
2026-08-28
California whiptail
Out on open gravel at midday in August, which is when the other lizards here have gone under a rock.
2026-08-28
Striped skunk
Tail up is a warning, not a shot. It carries enough for five or six and needs more than a week to make more.
2026-08-28
Anna's hummingbird
It does not migrate. That single fact is why the winter-flowering shrubs on this land matter.
2026-08-28
Turkey vulture
One of the very few birds that can smell. It finds carrion under a closed forest canopy, from the air.
2026-08-28Other articles
Whiteleaf manzanita
The first thing in flower here, and often the only thing. Pink urns in January, on a shrub that peels itself red.
2026-08-28
Chaparral currant
It flowers when nothing else does. That is the whole point of it, and it is why the hummingbirds stay.
2026-08-28Golden fleece
The Butte Fire made this plant's decade. It came up through the burn and it is now one of the commonest shrubs on the land.
2026-08-28
Deer brush
Cream plumes over the whole hillside in April, and seed that can wait decades in the ground for the next fire.
2026-08-28
Yerba santa
Sticky, resinous, and named holy herb by people who used it for a cough long before anyone wrote it down.
2026-08-28
Mountain misery
Ankle-deep fern-like mats under the oaks, white rose flowers, and a resin that sticks to everything that walks through it.
2026-08-28
Twining snakelily
The only snakelily that climbs. It uses the shrub next to it to get its flowers up into the light.
2026-08-28
Shooting star
Swept-back magenta petals on a bare stalk. The shape is not decoration: it is a set of instructions for a bumblebee.
2026-08-28
Woolly Indian paintbrush
The red is not petals, and the plant is not feeding itself. Both facts take some getting used to.
2026-08-28
Yellow evening primrose
Opens at dusk, worked by moths in the dark, and orange and collapsed by the next afternoon.
2026-08-28
California everlasting
Papery whether it is flowering or setting seed, which makes it the hardest plant here to date honestly.
2026-08-28
Toyon
White flowers in June that nobody looks at, and red berries in December that everybody does.
2026-08-28
Canyon live oak
One tree that looks like two, and an acorn cup that settles the argument in about ten seconds.
2026-08-28
The blue acorns
They are not from a blue oak. Almost every source asked about them says otherwise, and almost every source is wrong.
2026-08-28
Silver bush lupine
The tall lupine: a woody, silver-leaved shrub to about 150 cm, holding violet spikes above the burn.
2026-08-28
Sky lupine
The short lupine: an annual, ankle high, that turns a whole hillside blue for about three weeks in April.
2026-08-28
Buckbrush
The other ceanothus. Stiff, grey, wedge-leaved and evergreen, and it flowers a month before deer brush.
2026-08-28
Black oak
The tree the Sentinels are. It is also the one that comes back from the root after a fire that killed everything above ground.
2026-08-28
Poison oak
It is not an oak, it is not always a shrub, and it does not always have green leaves. The one thing that never changes is the three.
2026-08-28
Yellow starthistle
Not a thistle, not from here, and fatal to horses. This one is a problem to be managed rather than a plant to admire.
2026-08-28
California buckeye
It drops its leaves in August, not November. The falls are named for it.
2026-08-28
Ponderosa pine
Needles in threes, and bark that smells of vanilla in the afternoon sun.
2026-08-28
Incense cedar
Not a cedar. The flat sprays are the field mark, and pencils are made of it.
2026-08-28
Western bracken fern
One of the most widely distributed plants on earth, and it stands green in dry grass in August.
2026-08-28
Common mullein
Not from here. A rosette of felt one year, a two-meter spike the next, and then it is dead.
2026-08-28
Bull thistle
Not from here, and the spiny wings running down the stem are what name it.
2026-08-28
Himalayan blackberry
Not from here, and not going anywhere. The fruit is the reason the fox and the bear come through.
2026-08-28
Northern California black walnut
Native to California, and almost certainly standing here because somebody planted it.
2026-08-28
Sierra iris
Pale yellow, low in the dry grass, and it grows nowhere outside California.
2026-08-28
White morning glory
A native vine with a flower twice the size of the introduced bindweed it gets mistaken for.
2026-08-28