A team of mammal researchers from UCD will be recording the birth up to 150 doe-eyed deer during the next month.
It is fawning season in the Phoenix Park, and the 600-strong herd of fallow deer will be busy giving birth to their young on a daily basis, according to Don Doran, park ranger and deer-keeper for the OPW.
"The main birthing area is between the Papal Cross and the Castleknock Gate," Mr Doran said yesterday, pointing to signs which clearly mark out the area as a "dog-exclusion zone during fawning season".
The female deer, which have been pregnant for the past eight months, are currently leaving their herd to give birth, mainly in long grass and nettle areas.
In the interests of herd management as well as science, the births of as many fawns as possible are recorded every year. A 10-strong team from the mammal research unit in UCD's department of zoology, led by Michelle Lord and Jacqui Fox, were in the park yesterday.
Equipped with large salmon nets and recording equipment they moved in a line, slowly through the Oldtown Woods section of the park, looking for fawns asleep in the undergrowth. "The females leave the fawns alone for a few hours at a time and come back regularly to nurse them," explained Mr Doran.
The fawns are left "in hiding" until ready to run with their mothers at about two weeks old.
While the mothers are away and the young are "in hiding", the team can get to the fawns.
At about 11.30am yesterday the team came across their third fawn of the day asleep in a patch overgrown with waist-high nettles. They placed a net over her to stop her running off. Two of the team held her, one covering her eyes and stroking her nose to calm her and the other measuring her length and girth and checking her for parasites.
While some fawns are black or dark brown, this was a classic fallow fawn, chestnut fur with white spots, said Mr Doran. The team estimated she was three days old and weighed in at 5.74 kilos. She is tagged as the team's 41st fawn of the season.
The UCD team is building up a detailed database of the blood lines and the families within the Phoenix Park herd. They are taking hair, tissue and blood samples from each fawn for the DNA. They are also making a digital recording of each fawn's bleat, which Michelle Lord explained they will use to research whether females recognise their own young's voice.
Ten fawns will be fitted with radio transmitters to help research issues such as when the mothers introduce their young to the herd. The Phoenix Park herd are the first deer in Ireland on which such research is being conducted.
One of the major problems every year is dog-owners allowing their pets off the leash in the fawning area.
"Last year we found about 14 fawns with puncture wounds around their neck and face. They didn't live, they were killed," said Mr Doran.
