Photo: Sweet fawn spotted in the ferns

Photo: Sweet fawn spotted in the ferns

Our photo of the day is a story of spots.

Behold the fawn in the ferns! Not only is photographer richardliebert fortunate to have such a beautiful plot of green, but on this day, he had fawns to photograph as well – the young beauty here is one of two.

And how about those spots? What a lovely display of little constellations. A young deer retains its spots for 90 to 120 days, after which they begin to fade as the fawn grows a thicker coat in preparation for winter weather.

Biologist Jeannine Fleegle has some more facts about these flecks over which we fawn. "The average number of spots on a fawn’s coat ranges from 272-342. And each spot ranges in size from 0.24 to 0.51 inches in diameter. Yes, someone actually counted and measured them at some point," she explains. "Like a fingerprint, spot patterns are unique to every fawn adhering to the general arrangement described above [that being that the spots of their coat run in two lateral lines from ear to tail on each side of a fawn's body] but differing in the number of spots, their size, and how they are dispersed."

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