3 days ago
Delight as 'Bambi' baby deer spotted behind Manchester city centre nightclub
A baby deer has been spotted close to Manchester city centre, more evidence that wildlife is returning. The creature was seen on a riverside path, behind Hidden nightclub off the A56 Bury New Road, at about 8.30pm on Friday evening.
Support worker Tom Lightbown, 36, was walking along a path beside the River Irwell on the way to the shops when he spotted the baby deer (fawn) ahead of him. It's just a few minutes' walk to the AO Arena. Tom shared his pictures with the Manchester Evening News.
He said: "I was just going shopping into the city centre. I was walking up a path and as I got around the corner, it was just standing in the pathway. I just stopped. I didn't want to carry on walking towards it because there is a road on the other side and if I scared it, it's going to run potentially into the road.
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"I stood still watching it for a while. It came onto the path and started walking towards me. It was quite a nice experience, actually. It was a very nice experience, seeing a creature like that in the city centre. It was quite surprising. I've seen urban foxes before but I've never seen a deer.
"It's quite a shy animal to be so close to an urban area."
It's not the first time deer have been spotted in urban areas, but rarely has one so young come so close to Manchester city centre. In 2021 a deer was spotted near HMG Paints in Collyhurst Road gambolling in the grass near the factory near a stretch of the River Irk near Cheetham Hill.
Staff at the company had previously seen fish, stoats and even otters but never deer.
In 2019 a deer was spotted swimming alongside the ducks in a canal near Castlefield. The animal was later spotted heading towards the Palace Theatre with more sightings on Oxford Road.
An otter was spotted in in a stretch of the Irwell, close to Manchester city centre, in June 2023. The animal was seen underneath the Trinity Bridge close to the Lowry Hotel.
It followed a previous otter sighting in December 2020 which at the time was described as a 'big deal'. Mike Duddy, a project manager with the Mersey Rivers Trust, said then that otters and other fish being spotted had become more common as the condition of Manchester's waterways had improved. Peregrine falcons have been a feature of the city centre for years.
The Wildlife Trust for Lancashire, Manchester And North Merseyside is campaigning to 're-wild' Manchester, through its 'Nature Recovery Network' for the city to encourage more frogs, bats, bees, starlings and wildflowers.
The trust says on its website: "Working with the Greater Manchester Ecology Unit we are looking in detail at where the different wild places are situated across Manchester, as well the distribution of a number of different plant and animal species. This information will be used to help us create a Nature Recovery Network map for the city which will identify priority habitats and wildlife corridors."
