There's a story here....


The three brown patches on the snow, seen in this picture, each held a large bale of silage; one of those "marshmallows" that are very commonly seen on farms these days.
Around the turn of the year we noticed red deer feeding in the snow-covered field. They seemed to have got through the plastic and into one of the bales. On subsequent walks we noticed other bales had been raided and we guessed the farmer was unhappy!
Today I wandered down into the field.  I was amazed to see the deer had opened up around 17 of these bales. They whole field was full of snow trodden flat by the deer. It looked as if there had been hundreds them here, though surely there can't be so many deer in this part of the forest. Paths led from the trees into the field from all directions. The track you can see in this picture, disappearing into the distant trees is one such deer path. Judging by the prints (and poo) there were a lot of red deer and roe deer, and just one or two elk/moose.
The tractor trail I followed seems to have been created by the farmer rescuing as much as he could, once he realised what was going on, leaving a brown circle of hay where each bale had been. It’s not easy farming up here in the best of years, so I feel a bit sorry for the farmer.

Maybe those plastic wrapped marshmallows of silage will have to be fetched back to the farm in future years, now the deer have learned this trick!