Bog Myrtle & Peat

My work to regenerate black grouse habitat on the Chayne has drawn all its energy from my imagination. I have seen etchings and illustrations of black grouse shooting in the Victorian age, and local guns in their fifties and sixties still vividly recall the thrill of the sport, but only ever having seen three of the birds for myself, I am forced to fill in alot of the colour by making it up. I know that black grouse are fantastic birds, but they are now so rare that my interest is based largely on hearsay and assumption. Hearing of a secret location high up in the Galloway hills where up to twenty birds meet to lek, I couldn’t resist dropping in for a visit.

It was a stunning morning as we span along the Solway coast to Newton Stewart, then followed the dwindling road deep into the hills. The sun was well up and the shadows were shrinking when we reached the lekking site, tucked in by the side of the tarmac. As I turned the ignition off, a gentle purring sound oozed out from the heather to my left. Standing on a tussock of dead purple moor grass, a male black grouse stood poised in all his splendour, head ducked low down to the ground with a white bustle arched high over his back. He ignored us completely, and continued to set the dawn to rights with his oddly hypnotic bubbling. Twenty yards up the hill, another lekking cock bird rustled through the grass like a snuffling hedgehog, exotic tail fanned out behind him, trembling every feather.

Both birds had swollen their necks into thick columns, and they looked like shiny feathered sausages being towed through the undergrowth. Every ten or fifteen seconds, a spasm of rage would consume them. With the abruptness of a sneeze, they would hop a couple of inches off the ground and wheeze an angry call. The overall impression was one of fantastic and hilarious self-importance and weary forgetfulness. They bubbled passively like drunken old men, then snorted into life with expressions of fury and world-weariness.

Even as we watched, the display petered out and the cocks separated. There was a moment of thrilling excitement when one took to the air and flew like a stunning and distorted pheasant over a low ridge. We listened to him land and start cooing again, this time out of sight. My black grouse book tells me that the peak of the display often takes place in the twilight before the sun rises, and it is probable that we missed the majority of the display. Still, if I had seen all twenty birds lekking at once I would have probably have blown a fuse with the excitement of it.

I will definetely be going back…