Every autumn, for the past four years, I’ve seen black grouse (Tetrao tetrix) here. Always single birds, most likely wanderers from the lek at Langdon Beck in Teesdale, just a few miles south.
This morning there were six – four males and two females, in a sheltered hollow in rough pasture, halfway down the fellside. In the distance they could have been mistaken for large free-range chickens, but just a glance through binoculars revealed the distinctive profile and plumage of the male black grouse, striking even in autumn.
In spring their feathers are magnificent – glossy black with indigo iridescence, white wing bars – and they have a rakish red wattle over each eye. Their communal courtship, in a lek, is one of the most memorable sights in the whole of British ornithology. With heads lowered, wings drooped, feathers fluffed, wattles inflated and tail raised to reveal washday-white tail coverts, they advance on one another. The most intimidating claims the centre of the lekking ground and has first pick of females.
There was nothing combative about them this morning, sun basking and amicably feeding in their rushy hollow. But when I leaned over the wall, 10 metres away, a long neck rose and a head with gunmetal-grey beak and unblinking eye swivelled to meet my gaze: a young greyhen, the female of the species, closer than I have ever seen before.
The cock birds, with their extravagant feathers and aggressive courtship, are always the focus of attention but at close range a greyhen is captivatingly beautiful.
We stared at each other for minutes, me not daring to move, before she rose from the shelter of the rushes and walked on to open ground with fastidious steps, as if testing the ground under each foot, and began to feed. The barring of her plumage, in shades of brown and black, flecked with white, lent fluidity to the movements of such a portly bird.
In spring, snipes, curlews, golden plovers and lapwings breed here. I can only hope that one day black grouse might lek in this spot too, on the flanks of a fell that provides magnificent, unbroken, views over much of the upper dale.
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