Black Grouse

Lying in bed after a 2 o'clock alarm, I debated: warm, soft, comfy bed, sleep, against 3 hour drive, cold, not much clue on the final destination. Thankfully my more adventurous side won and I set off with the instructions but that the satnav was a couple of miles out! How difficult could it be? 

So 3 hour drive, pitch black all around I got onto the moor having fed the OS co-ordinates  into Belinda (car) with the uneasy feeling that all was not right and it wasn't. Using phone, satnav and a map time was ticking. Panic started setting in as I knew I was not where I should be at the time it was. I had met patches of fog on the way but now, (and see the shot in the Extra), the vis was shocking. The light was getting blue, I was supposed to arrive in the dark! Finally getting on the right road to go over the moors I was looking for a lay-by. Well there were loads of tiny pull-overs in the headlights and driving really slowly, better vis with the headlights switched off because of the fog, I came up against a sheet of water which I couldn't see the other side of. No way. I was in a Cathy and Heathcliff situation as in Wuthering Heights: dark, mysterious, quite spooky, cold, a bit frightening tho' only because I started thinking of the Moors Murderers, foggy, drops on either side of the track into black pools of water ........ I turned round. Went back along the track to a pull-in where there was another car and sidled behind the vehicle after annoying the occupant who said that this was the main lay-by for viewing. 10ft vis now and dropping the windows I could plainly hear the calls of the black grouse. 

I have had to blip this. The extra is what it was like in reality with this blip being the photoshopped version. 

Black grouse are a Red List endangered species and the males gather in the spring to sites known as leks to compete for dominance and mate with the shy and reclusive grey hens. The lek was what I was wanting to see with the jumping, stutting and leaping.

It was more than exciting, stunning to see, fascinating to listen to, a first for me and the grouse performed for about 2 hours - quite a few of them, and I would have had hundreds of shots if it hadn't been for the mist blanketing the moors. I was there, the grouse were there, they were performing but photographically it was pants.