Black grouse courtship
The UK would be the poorer without sparring black grouse to serve up an unforgettable wildlife spectacle, and Ben Hoare discovers that fire, storms and messy foresters are what they need to thrive.
Experience this must-see wildlife spectacle
Fuzzy shapes materialise on the hillside barely 20m away. It’s just gone 4am, still dark and close to freezing, though this is early May. Gradually, the smudges resolve into about two dozen male black grouse. They have gathered at their communal display ground, or lek, as they do every dawn, and this lek at the Glen Tanar estate next to Balmoral on Royal Deeside is one of Britain’s biggest.
The birds’ snow-white undertail coverts, fanned into absurdly flamboyant Elizabethan ruffs, shine like beacons in the murk. Extra white splodges decorate their wings and shoulders. As the sun crests the horizon, it becomes possible to make out the difference between the jet black of each male’s face and belly and its gorgeous, indigosuffused neck and back. Over the eyes, crimson ‘combs’ (swollen tissue that can be inflated at will) resemble war paint.
Then there’s the sound. No other British birds sound anything like black grouse. A constant soft bubbling, which goes by the beautiful word ‘rocooing’, rises and falls over the lek. My scribbled notes record that it’s like the “hubbub of distant conversation”, “wind in sails” or “whipping ropes”, though this doesn’t begin to do it justice. The ebb and flow of ro-cooing is punctuated with uglier hisses, like raspy throat-clearing, and sudden flurries of wings as birds rearrange themselves or jump briefly into the air.
All across the lek, blackcock – to use their traditional name – are ro-cooing, pouting, squaring up to one another, scurrying to new positions to challenge different males. Their movements back and forth appear somehow synchronised, reminiscent of people fencing or relaxing by practising Tai chi. In reality, lekking is a serious business: the displaying males are