Another smoky day here in Calgary (21 July 2017), with a temperature of 20C this morning and cloudy. The air quality yesterday was expected to reach High Risk, but it seemed to be bearable late in the afternoon. So, I took a drive along some of my favourite roads SW of the city, seeing a few of the 'usual' things. I really hope that rain will arrive soon to help the firefighters in British Columbia and in Alberta, too! So much devastation.

In between photographing Mountain Bluebirds, I drove part way along a road that I had only ever been on once before, and that was quite recently. Usually, I am home earlier than I was yesterday. This later time meant that I was lucky enough to see two families of deer - White-tailed and Mule Deer. The animals in this photo were the second family I saw. A short distance before, I had seen a Mule Deer doe with her fawn standing at the edge of the road. I pulled over way down the road and waited till they had safely crossed. Managed to get a couple of distant shot through the windscreen, with the usual poor quality results. I knew that there would be a barbed-wire fence the far side of the road and I didn't want to spook them and risk them getting tangled in the sharp barbs. Several years ago, I had seen a huge Moose get spooked and then get briefly tangled in barbed wire - it spooked when it suddenly realized that some cows had quietly come up behind it!