There’s nothing like getting out of bed in the morning and discovering a new life, said John Moritz of Langley.

“It’s amazing,” he said, “to travel the world and return home to see a deer born on Whidbey Island.”

A couple of days ago, Moritz looked out his kitchen window to the field next door about 6 a.m. in time to see a mother brown deer and its fawn. The spotted youngster had just been born, and already was up and wobbling. Moritz grabbed his camera.

Shortly after, the fawn padded after mom while she grazed, then plopped down in the grass under a birch tree and took a nap for the rest of the day, Moritz said.

“It was charming and adorable,” he added.

Moritz, 45, operates a Christian men’s home along Langley Road near where it intersects with Maxwelton Road.

He said he’s been on the island for about five years, and has recently concluded a stint with a humanitarian organization that sent him throughout the world, most recently to Afghanistan. He said he’s currently trying to establish an artistic metal-working business at his home.

Mortiz has been living at his present location for about two years, and like most South Whidbey residents, he has seen plenty of deer, which wander uninhibited throughout the South End.

“They’re always hanging around, trying to eat my apples and grapes,” he said. “I have Asian pears which I never get to see, because they eat them first.”

But he said that this is the first time he has observed the actual emergence of deer life.

“They all stopped and stared,” Moritz said of his residents. “New birth never ceases to amaze everybody.”