Andy and I have been on a bit of a health kick for the last few weeks. I've started the "Couch to 5K" plan to try and get back some of the fitness I had before Isobel was born, and Andy's started doing a quick walk in the morning before heading off to work. There's a fair bit of greenery in our neigbourhood, so we usually see some of the local wildlife when we're pounding the pavement ... however usually limited to birds, rabbits, squirrels and that sort of thing.

Isobel is pretty good with her night sleep, which means I can often get a sleep in til about 7am. This morning, however, Andy came back from his walk very excited and dragged me out of bed. He carefully raised the blinds in our bedroom, and there was a rather large deer having breakfast in our backyard! We wondered if it was a female mule deer, as it looked very similar to the deer we saw on our road trip last year. She was having a munch on the new growth on our blackberry bush, and appeared to have a bit of a limp on her front left leg. Andy popped back downstairs to grab his camera, so I just sat and watched the deer happily munch away.

We couldn't crack the window, it hasn't been opened since the nice weather last year and would have made too much noise. Even the passing traffic on the road near our house surprised her a little now and again. After a while she wandered over to the cottonwood hanging over our side fence, but then appeared to stir up some bugs in the back corner of the yard - a couple of startled jumps and she was off! She bolted down the side of the house towards the driveway, and must have disappeared through the broken fence panel in our front yard.

Andy checked the camera, and then had a bit of a grumble about low light, ISO settings, shooting through windows and filters . He still managed to get one decent shot, enough to prove there are benefits to waking up early every now and again!