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Force nine gales were predicted. Saturday came, and they weren't wrong. Weather jargon doesn't mean too much to me, but it was , which somehow sounds as bad as it was. My morning run was more like running on a treadmill. We left the live crew with their getting-off-the-island dilemma and headed up to the rutting greens.

The scene as we arrived for our first day of webcasting didn't look good. The aerial that we had set up as a midpoint between the village greens and us, was at a very precarious angle, and there wasn't a deer in sight. The wind was blowing up a storm and rain was coming down in sheets.

We set up our camera on the Laundry Greens and began transmitting shots of the weather, while Jo went to try and fix the aerial. He went with nothing but a magic arm, and came back amused at his optimism. He had barely been able to stand up against the force of the wind, and it had taken all his effort just to pull the aerial upright.

Jo and comms engineer Dave went off to fix the aerial, while Phil and I began webcasting from the Laundry Greens.

Then Sean, one of the deer experts, came in to fill us in on the dramatic events that had been unfolding under the blanket of the violent weather. He'd gone with Pete, the wildlife cameraman, to film the waves breaking on the beach and the rain lashing down, because it looked quite spectacular.

When they were walking back up to their usual filming position, Sean noticed that there were a few new hinds coming across the greens, which can sometimes cause fights to break out, because the main players are all keen to have them in their harem. A few seconds later he noticed that a fight was going on. He alerted Pete to it, and he started to set up his camera to film it. Sean then had a chance to look with his binoculars. It was Percy and Titus fighting.

They were fighting on flat wet rocks. Sean was trying to watch the fight, and trying to direct Pete to the action, so he didn't quite see how Titus slipped. But as he looked through his binoculars, he saw that Titus was on his back with all four legs in the air. Sean said he'd seen deer slip and fall before, but never like this.

When Titus fell, Percy seemed to keep on fighting. He had his head bowed towards Titus and was shaking it back and forth as if still trying to fight. But somehow Titus managed to roll over and stand up. Initially Sean thought he was okay, when suddenly he saw that he was gravely wounded. Seconds later, he started stumbling around as if he was drunk, then he fell into the valley and was out of sight.

Pete and Sean waited a while, but really they knew he wasn't going to get up. Percy had killed Titus.

Percy seemed to carry on as normal and went off to round up his hinds. Sean estimated that the whole fight lasted less than two minutes. about the death in Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú Earth News.

Stags do sometimes die during the rut, but Sean says there isn't a death every year in the research area. He had never seen a fight to the death before.

Deer don't set out to kill each other during the rut. The idea is to prove their dominance without fighting. Parallel walking and roaring is a way of assessing their potential strength and dominance, without the need to actually fight.

The researchers subsequently carried out a post mortem on Titus' body. This involved taking lots of measurements and samples for DNA analysis. Because he wasn't born in the research area, they don't yet have a DNA sample for Titus. Once they do, they may be able to assign paternity to him.

His carcass will be left to nature where he fell. We have already seen some and investigating, and a young golden eagle and juvenile have also had a look.

It does seem sad, but nature can be cruel. And the rut must go on.

Keep watching the webcams to see more drama unfold and be sure to watch the show on Friday to see Simon's take on the events.