Stalking a red stag

I’ve always wanted to experience the red stag rut in the wilds of Scotland, when male ‘stags’ compete for supremacy over the female ‘hinds.’ But I’ve never had the chance as it coincides with when I am busy painting originals for my Christmas exhibition.

I have seen red deer rutting in parks like Studley Royal, Bushey Park and Richmond Park. And while this can be quite spectacular, it doesn’t feel authentic. Then a customer in the gallery invited me to stay with him on an estate on the Glen Coe Range, owned by the family of the late James Bond author, Ian Fleming. This was a great opportunity to stalk deer with my camera. It is a very special area as much of the land in this region is completely wild, as there is no farming.

I headed north with fellow wildlife enthusiast, Jack Ashton-Booth, who helped me carry all my heavy camera gear up mountainsides and track the deer. We turned onto a single track road to Glen Etive. I could hear a stag roaring out of sight. We were surrounded by impressive Munro-s, the Scottish name for a mountain above 1,000m. That evening at the lodge the enormity of this challenge hit home! It had been such a mild autumn that most of the deer were still high up in the mountains and the rut was two weeks behind.

Early the next morning we spotted three stags high up on the hillside. We planned our approach, using the forest as cover. Between us we were carrying 34kg of camera gear which is quite some weight when you are climbing. We had to walk over cleared fell forest, stepping over spiky deep brash piles and cross a mountain stream to gain height.

We reached the edge of the trees only to be greeted by an old rickety deer fence. We couldn’t climb over it so we followed some deer tracks which led us up the hill and through a hole in the fence. Next we had to walk through dense bracken that was over six feet high. We used bracken and boulders as cover to gradually get closer to the stag. Once in range, I set up my camera and tripod and started to get some shots. But it was warm and sunny and the heat haze stopped my camera from focussing. The stag spotted my lens and started coming towards us, scenting the air to work out what we were.

The light was all wrong; I needed to be photographing the stag from the other side. So I set off again with the aim of looping around the stag unseen and hiding behind a large boulder which I had spotted. It took me two hours to do it! I headed up the mountain through bracken and into a line of silver birch. It was hard going as fallen trees and boulders were hidden beneath bracken. I fell several times, but eventually I was high up above the stag. Luckily, it hadn’t moved far.

I slid down a gully made by a mountain stream on my backside and made my final approach on my hands and knees. I peered round the boulder to see he was just 50 yards away. After all of this, I didn’t want to disturb him so was selective with the photographs I took. He sensed something wasn’t quite right and walked towards me with his head held high, scenting the air. I was getting fantastic head shots but it was quite intimidating to have him standing just 30 yards away. Finally, he settled down and I spent the next six hours photographing him.

By 7am the following day we had spotted him again. He had been wallowing in a bog overnight so he looked quite different with his fur shaggy and wet. You can identify stags by the shape of their antlers which have a varying number of points. This one had 10 points. He was so handsome, we nicknamed him George Clooney. He was lower down the mountain which was good, but there was a younger stag with him. He was much more flighty and headed up the mountain snorting in alarm as we approached, driving Clooney in front of him – and away from us.

I tried to get above the stags, using a stream gully as cover, but they were faster than me and gave us the slip. We looked for him for a further seven long hours, climbing up ever higher in the mountains but without success. We decided to call it a day by 5pm as we were worn out and hungry. But just as my vehicle came into view I spotted Clooney on the hill behind us. So we headed back to stalk him again. As we got closer he tussled with some grass, tossing a large clump into the air. Then he set back off down the mountain roaring before disappearing into the forest.

The following morning, we decided to look for a stag on lower ground, as we were ‘knackered.’ We spotted one roaming the valley bottom roaring. It was on the opposite side of a wide fast-flowing river. As I looked for somewhere to cross, I spotted another stag nearby. I couldn’t believe it: it was Clooney. I crossed the river and followed him upstream using the bank as cover.

I popped my head up over the bank: he was 150 yards away. To get closer I crawled over gravel and gorse on my belly. My camera got caught and the sound made Clooney put his head up and walk towards me snorting. I laid flat on the ground until he lost interest and then slowly crept forward again, using a small gully as cover. He spotted me just as I was getting my camera ready, but this time he looked straight at me with a look that said, ‘Oh it’s you again!’

By 9.30am I had spent two hours edging closer to him and he was just 50 yards away. He accepted my presence so I signalled Jack to join me. We spent the most amazing day following Clooney for about 11 hours like deer whisperers. We walked with him as if we were part of his herd. When he lay down for a rest, we did the same. He knew we were not a danger to him and eventually let us come within 25 yards.

It was fascinating to watch him wallow knee deep in a peaty pool. He was fired up by the other stags that were bellowing up on the hill behind. He began to tussle the bank with his antlers. He tossed his head up and sage grass, moss, mud and water went flying up into the air. Water streamed down his mane. He urinated in the pool, stirred it into the mud with his feet and flung it back over himself until he was drenched. It smelt surprisingly goat-y. He emerged from the bog proudly dripping with his new aroma and roaring. This stag eau de cologne must be attractive to hinds!

Jack recorded his roar on his phone. He played it back to check the sound, which really upset Clooney. He looked directly at Jack, holding his head high and roaring loudly in return. He started raking at the ground with his antlers. It was quite intimidating and we decided not to playback the ‘Clooney roar’ again.

The past three days were among the best that I had ever spent in Scotland. I was keen to get back to the easel and start a new painting of a stag that I had named after the actor George Clooney.

Short-Eared Owl Watch

I've just finished this painting of a short eared owl and it is now on show in my gallery in Thixendale, North Yorkshire. 

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Birds of prey have always fascinated me, especially owls. I have studied barn owls, tawny and little owls in great detail. But more elusive owls, such as short eared owls, were missing from my portfolio until this year. 

The British Isles have a resident population of short eared owls which mainly live on moorland. These birds migrate to lower lying lands when cold weather sets in. But much of the Britain’s winter population is made up of short eared owls that have migrated to the UK from Scandinavia, Iceland and even Russia. These birds are truly nomadic in the sense that they will migrate over 1,000 miles in search of good hunting grounds and to escape bad weather.

Living near the east coast, we are perfectly placed to see the first migrant short eared owls as they arrive in autumn. They favour large areas of rough grass, estuaries and marshes where they are more likely to find voles, their preferred prey.

You can tell what time of day an owl hunts by the colour of its eyes. Short eared owls have a piercing yellow eye, as do little owls and snowy owls. This indicates that they hunt during the day. Whereas the almost black eyes of a tawny owl means it hunts mainly at night. The painting below, which I also completed this year, shows just how bright their eyes are.

The fact that short eared owls hunt during the day means that they are easy to watch, when you can find them. The best time to see them in winter is during the late afternoon and large numbers of owls can occur in areas of good hunting.

I have seen them in the valley below my gallery in Thixendale, but their hunting patterns can be erratic and unreliable so when I learned of a popular short eared owl haunt south of the Humber River a year ago I took the opportunity of a clear winter’s day and went to see them for myself.

I set out my chair and tripod on the edge of a large patch of rough grass land shortly before lunch and waited. Before long a charm of goldfinches surrounded me, feeding on the thistles among the tussocks of grass, as buzzards, kestrels, marsh and hen harriers flew above me.

Then just before 2pm, as if out of nowhere, the air seemed to come alive with owls. I watched five short eared owls in the distance as they took it in turns to attack the marsh harrier. The attack looked almost synchronised as one by one they plummeted down like fighter planes mobbing a target. They mobbed the harrier, which had been sitting in a tree, until it gave up and flew away. Then three more short eared owls joined them and all eight began quartering the grassland to hunt on their long wings.

It was quite a spectacle. I waited for one of the owls to come in range of my camera, but they turned their attention to the buzzard which had been sitting on a fence post for the past two hours minding its own business. They soon moved him on and resumed skimming the long grass looking for voles.

It wasn’t long before one of the short eared owls spotted a perch close to me. It landed on it for a few minutes, shook its feathers – it was so close I could see the water droplets as they spun off its streaked plumage – looked me in the eye, and then it was off chasing another owl away. It was a really special moment. Its eyes, which are set off by dark markings that look like heavily applied mascara, are so piercing they seemed to see right through me.

There were so many owls that it wasn’t long before another drama unfolded before me. An owl that I was watching suddenly twisted in the air and then plummeted to the grass. I thought that perhaps it had caught something. And so did the kestrel I had seen earlier.

Within seconds it also dived into exactly the same spot. I couldn’t see exactly what happened next but there was clearly a tussle on the ground and the first to take flight was the owl, clutching a vole in its talons.

It was closely followed by the kestrel. Despite the fact that the kestrel was dwarfed by the owl’s metre-long wingspan, the kestrel seemed determined to try and pinch the owl’s prey.

The owl climbed higher and higher into the sky with the kestrel in dogged pursuit. But as the owl extended its lead, calling out angrily at the kestrel, the kestrel changed its tactics. It moved away and then climbed higher than the owl. Then it turned and stooped back down towards the owl. Swooping underneath it, the kestrel grabbed the vole as it passed, leaving the owl in a bit of a spin.

The kestrel then hovered down to the ground, transferring the vole from his talons to his beak just before it landed, the sun just setting behind it.

I have seen kestrels pinch meals off barn owls many times and the stealing has an official name, klepto-parasitism, but I was surprised to see one try it with a larger owl.

It made for a spectacular end to a great afternoon.

Fox-a-mousing

This painting of a fox mousing in the snow is currently on show in my gallery in Thixendale, North Yorkshire. 

I spotted this fox as I was driving home late one evening. Dusk was just settling over the snowy landscape when I saw something moving by a straw stack. I stopped my car just in time to see a fox slinking round the back of the stack out of sight. It reappeared a hundred yards away, heading towards a long straight drainage channel on the edge of a field; almost the size of a small canal. I was all fingers and thumbs getting my camera out.

Meanwhile the fox passed through a hedge and re-appeared on the bank of the channel. It turned and looked at me in a nonchalant manner before continuing down the bank. Here it cocked its leg to mark out its territory. Suddenly it froze, head pointing downwards and ears up. I guessed it was ‘mousing’ or more likely had heard a vole moving under the snow.

It repositioned its legs, ready to pounce, and pinpointed the position of its prey before it sprang high up into the air and dove into the snow, front feet first. Its nose was buried deep in the snow while its thick brush tail wagged from side to side as it hunted. Then the fox lifted its head back out of the snow, and shook it. Bits of reed fell from its mouth – it had missed.

It continued onwards and I followed it on foot as it set out on this night of mischief. I used the hedge as cover to get closer.Wild country foxes are tricky subjects to approach but there is no harm in trying. By the time I caught up with the wily creature it was watching a flock of starlings nosily bathing and drinking under a bridge where the water hadn’t frozen.

Stealthfully, the fox crossed the bridge, but the birds were far too wise and fast for him. They flew into a nearby willow tree and settled down to roost. The fox continued on the opposite side of the channel. I ducked back through the hedge to keep out of sight as I followed. After 100 yards I crept back through and found him on point, looking at the ground again.

This time he was after a mole. The dark soil of the freshly dug mole hill stood out against the whiteness of the snow. A twig snapped beneath my foot and I froze as the fox looked my way. Luckily some movement underground refocused its attention. He paused, repositioned his feet and cocked his head to one side. 

By this time it was too dark to take photographs, but I was enjoying watching. After a tense few minutes, the fox sniffed the molehill, raked over it with its front paw and then, realising that the mole must have escaped, cocked its leg peevishly on the molehill. It was as if it was saying: ‘If I can’t eat you I’ll leave you with this smell instead’.

As the fox trotted off, I decided to try to keep up. But as I stepped forward my foot cracked noisily on an ice puddle hidden under the snow. The next footstep made the same sound and I was afraid I had scared off the fox. Sure enough as I reappeared out of the hedge, it had vanished. I could see hundreds of yards in each direction but it had outwitted me.

A silhouette in the distance caught my eye and I checked it out with my binoculars. It was a roe deer browsing. I was out in the open now and the deer was quick to spot me and quickly pronked into some cover. I turned to head back and crossed the bridge retracing the fox’s movements. I soon picked up its fresh tracks and as I approached the molehill I caught its unmistakably pungent smell.

I crossed the bridge where the starlings had gone to roost. They were silhouetted against the sky, which was now lit up with stars. It was well below freezing and the snow was developing a crust. Imprinted into it with perfect precision was the shape left by the fox’s head where it had pounced for a vole. 

Saving Nature: Looking after Tawny Owls

A pair of tawny owls feed in my garden each night, rewarding me with some incredible sightings. Last year they even brought their chicks to the bird table and on one occasion I got these photographs of them balancing on the branch outside my living room window! It has been fantastic watching them at such close quarters, they are such characters. The way they bob up and down when they spot something new is so funny. 

I’ve been putting food out for tawny owls to encourage them into the garden for some years now. I use them as models for my paintings and many of the pictures of tawny owls that hang in my gallery are portraits of this particular family. On one occasion my favourite male model, who features in the painting below, got caught in a scuffle and nearly lost his eye! Thankfully it healed up and I went on to paint him again.

The adult pair returns each year to nest in a line of sycamore trees just below my gallery. Some years ago I hoisted a hollowed-out stump into one of the trees and encouraged them to use that to nest in.

I wanted to use this nest box solely because it made an attractive prop for the backdrop of my paintings. Last year it came into its own. The adult pair had four chicks of their own and became surrogate parents to six more after I was given some by Ryedale Wildlife Rehabilitation Centre. The tawny parents didn't appear to be able to count and took to the role of feeding what now amounted to 10 chicks without hesitation. I helped the parent birds along by offering extra food out on the bird table. It was quite dramatic the day these chicks fledged. We had had a week of torrential rain and the owlets got so wet their feathers were too sodden to be able to fly back up to the safety of the nest. I couldn’t help myself when I saw the fledglings soaked to their skins, their feathers stuck fast to their bodies. I scooped them up and brought them inside to dry them off with my wife's hair drier before popping them carefully back into nest.

Tawny owls are adventurous birds and once they’ve decided to explore the world outside the nest there’s no stopping them. They often venture out before they have learned to fly. I had to rescue the fledglings two more times that same week! Tawny owls are one of the earliest owls to nest and are often sitting on eggs by March. They nest in a hole in a tree, but will readily use specially designed nest boxes which replicate these natural sites.They usually lay three to four eggs but clutches ranging between one and seven have been recorded. From these clutches, two or three young will be successfully raised each year - so my success was really incredible.

The female does most of the incubating of the eggs as well as nurturing the chicks in the early stages. The male meanwhile hunts both for the female, himself and the chicks. After 32 to 34 days the chicks start to hatch. Their hatching is staggered as owls will begin incubating as soon as the first egg is laid. This means that the chicks can vary in size from the start. Only the strongest survive, especially if food is in short supply. The chicks grow quickly in the early days and the female will start hunting to keep up with the demand for food.

By four of five weeks, the chicks start trying to leave the safety of the nest. As I discovered, this is quite precarious because often these adventures take place well before they can actually fly. And, of course, their explorations take place several metres above ground. Accidents happen and young chicks frequently end up on the ground where they can look rather helpless and abandoned. However, this is quite natural and all part of growing up.

Passers-by often make the mistake of picking up these young owls and taking them away, thinking that they are rescuing them. Instead, it is better to find their nesting tree, which is usually nearby. It shouldn’t be difficult to spot as there is usually a hole in the tree. Put them either back into the hole or onto a sheltered branch close to the trunk so that they are off the ground and away from predators. But be careful, tawny owls are very protective parents and if the adult birds spot you near their chicks they will attack you!! It would be safer to wear a helmet and if you are at all in doubt don’t worry about leaving them on the nearest branch, they are capable of climbing up vertical trunks with their claws and beak

Come dusk, they will start to call and let their parents know where they are and that they are hungry again. Tawny owls are devoted parents and will look after their chicks until September, but come October the parents will shoo them away and my new models have to find their own territories. It can be a noisy time as you hear them sending the chicks off. It seems cruel but it’s all part of growing up and perfectly natural. These chicks will need to find their own territory with enough food to sustain them if they are to survive, and the parents know that.

The latest brood have now gone from the garden and I miss them. But the adults have been protecting the nest site so they are clearly getting ready again for next year. 

Farming for Lapwings

As I continue to look at what we can do to save declining species for my exhibition Saving Nature, which opens at my Thixendale gallery on Saturday, I thought I would share the following on lapwings. 

Lapwing Study, by Robert E Fuller

Lapwings are beautiful birds. Their striking black and white plumes, delicate crest and iridescent sheen of green, blue and purple make them an attractive subject to paint. And, when courting, they put on a tumbling flight performance which is fun to watch.

But they have been in decline since the 1950s, mainly due to intensive farming practises, and there are now just 140,000 breeding pairs left in the UK.

One of the problems is that they nest in large, open areas where the vegetation is short. I watched plenty during a trip to the Dales earlier this year, but it is getting increasingly rare to see them nesting in arable areas like East Yorkshire. The trend for autumn sown crops means that these crops are usually too high by the time lapwings are looking to nest and so instead they tend to choose ploughed fields where they run the risk of losing their eggs under the rollers.

My father, who in 1995 won one of conservationist’s most sought-after prizes, the silver lapwing award, for the work he did to promote wildlife at his farm in Givendale, used to mark out lapwing nests with flags to ensure the drivers didn’t mow them down. Thankfully nowadays more farmers are taking up the challenge of protecting the countryside for wildlife, with an increasing number becoming involved in government stewardship schemes.

Three years ago I visited a farmer I know in Melbourne in East Yorkshire.  Jeremy Kemp had been awarded a Higher Level Stewardship Schemes four years beforehand and had put aside two five acre strips for breeding lapwings. Jeremy had ‘disked’ his lapwing strip to create the right, ploughed, effect to encourage lapwings to nest there. 

But finding their nests in the freshly-turned earth proved to be a difficult task. As we drove up to the edge of the field, six lapwings immediately took flight. We stopped and watched. Within 10 minutes the birds came back and settled down to brood. Not wanting to bring the car any closer, we fixed our eyes on each nest and then approached cautiously on foot. The lapwings flew off again but when we got to the spot where we thought the nests were likely to be, we put a short cane in the ground to mark it and then searched around, treading carefully of course.

Just as I was beginning to give up all hope I spotted a nest. Lapwing eggs are superbly camouflaged in a simple scrape in the earth lined with dry grasses. They are a sensitive bird and to watch them on their nests you need to be in a hide and to very gradually inch the hide closer and closer a bit each day. Fearful of scaring them, I didn’t return with my hide until a few days later. Rather than build a hide at the site, which is something I would do for most nesting wild birds, I brought a ready made one of plywood which I could easily rock out of the back of a trailer at the edge of the field.

I carried it into the field and set it down 30 metres away from the nest. Then I returned to the edge of the field to make sure the female was okay about this new presence. Thankfully she flew back to the nest and promptly settled down on her eggs without any apparent concern.

During the course of the following week I moved the hide a few metres closer each day and every time waited to see if she returned to the nest.It was during this week that I also found the other two nests. I marked them with hazel twigs and kept an eye on them from my hide.

By the second week my hide was only nine metres away from the nest and I got some great shots of the lapwing brooding. She was very protective and one evening I watched her see off a family of starlings that were foraging a little too close to the nest, rushing at them furiously with her wings splayed. But what I was really after was some photographs of her with small chicks.

Timing is always difficult with lapwings since soon after they hatch the chicks will go off to forage for insects by themselves. They don’t then return to the nest as the adult will brood them anywhere in the field I realised there was a chance of this happening when one evening I looked in on one of the two nests marked with hazel twigs and discovered four chicks had recently hatched. Two were still wet.

So I decided to hedge my bets and put up second hide on the nest that was still to hatch, again moving it closer to the nest a bit at a time. By now I was checking on the eggs at both hides daily and was just beginning to wonder if they would ever hatch when one evening I put an egg from the first nest I had located to my ear and heard a faint cheeping and tapping. I arrived early the next day fully expecting to see the chicks, but there was just a small chip in each of the eggs.

To my dismay the next day there was a downpour and I watched frustrated as the rain lashed against my studio window. The sun didn’t emerge until evening but as soon as it was out I headed down to the hide. The chicks had hatched and I was lucky enough to get a few photographs of them as they foraged with their attentive mother.

It wasn’t what I had hoped for and so I headed off to inspect the other nest. The eggs here were now chipping. When I returned the following morning three chicks had hatched overnight. They were still damp. But thankfully one egg was still to hatch. At last, this was the moment I had been waiting for. As I settled into the hide the female lapwing arrived and began to shuffle about trying to make herself comfortable, all the while trying not to tread on her chicks.

It was amusing to see how she was unable to settle until everything was just right. I watched as she began tidying up. She picked up an empty eggshell, flew off and dropped it about 30 metres away before she finally settled down.

As the morning wore on she would stand up every so often to check the progress of her chicks and by late morning the three chicks had dried out and were taking their first steps on oversized, wobbly legs.

Two were quite adventurous and by lunchtime had begun foraging missions of their own, pecking at insects and scratching about. They then got tired and fell asleep in the sun but she woke them with a contact call and encouraged them back under her.

After five hours in the hide I was pleased with the photographs I had and so left the new family to their adventures.

During the course of three weeks I had made 12 trips and clocked up 500 miles in my car to study these lapwings.

I am always very careful to cause as little disturbance as possible to nesting wild birds but over the years I have noticed that my presence at a nest has one positive consequence - it unnerves predators such as crows.

And it is such a positive thing the government, under the Higher Level Stewardship Scheme, is helping farmers to protect these beautiful birds. Hopefully one day they will be as plentiful here as they are on the Dales.

Don't miss my exhibition, running at my gallery in Thixendale, YO17 9LS, until Nov 29th for all you need to know about how Art is Saving Nature.

Preview of new original paintings 2015

I've just finished a new collection of paintings in time for my exhibition opening on Saturday, November 7th-29th. Here's a sneak preview.

Weasel Wall, Acrylic painting by Robert E Fuller £4,350 Image size: 26x18" Framed 39 x 32" 

I had a family of weasels living in my back garden so I made nesting chambers and feeding boxes which I  surrounded by natural stones or roots and I installed ten surveillance cameras to track their movements around the garden. This is one of the male kits emerging from its nest.

Fox-a-mousing, Original acrylic painting by Robert E Fuller. £2,150.
Image Size: 10.5x6.25" Framed 20.25x6.25"

I saw this fox one winter coming out of a stack of straw

bales. I parked my car and followed it on foot down a bank of a canal.  The fox stopped and I watched it listening face down in the snow; it then pounced into the air plunging head first into the snow after a vole or a mouse. It missed and went on its way. I looked at where it had pounced and there in the deep snow was a perfect face print of a fox!

Short-eared owl in flight, original acrylic painting by Robert E Fuller. £2,595,
Image Size: 13.5x6.75" Framed: 23x18"

I spent several days in deep snow watching five short eared owls hunting for voles in a valley on the Yorkshire Wolds. I was amazed how they could dive into 18” of snow to catch their prey. I was dressed in a white ski suit to disguise my presence as they hunted.

Grey Partridge- Christmas Calling Acrylic painting by Robert E Fuller £3,500
Image Size: 10.5x14.25" Framed: 20.5x25"

I was photographing hares on a snow-covered field hoping to capture them boxing in the snow. The mist came down and I was surrounded by white. I heard a grey partridge calling, it was getting louder each call it made – then a single partridge came out of the mist towards me. A weak sun came through the mist and lit up the bird as it called; it kept running and calling, looking for the rest of the covey before it vanished into the mist.

Barn Owl in Elm Stump, Original Acrylic Painting by Robert E Fuller. £6,550
Image Size 17.25x21.25" Framed: 29x33.5"

I lifted this old elm stump into a tree near my house to make a natural nest box. Kestrels and tawny owls have used it in the past to nest in but 2015 was the first year in which a barn owl used it. The male barn owl overthrew a pair of kestrels which were going to nest there, it was an hour long battle but eventually the barn owl won. This is the female which arrived two hours after the male’s fight with the kestrel. It was very interesting watching the barn owls meeting for the first time.

Climbing Stoat, Original Acrylic Painting by Robert E Fuller £5,290
Image size: 13 x 18.25" Framed: 32.25 x 25.75"

I had a family of stoats living in the garden and this one found the branch where I feed my local kestrels. I love how mischievous they are; sometimes they would push the kestrels off the food and pinch it, they always won, even though the kestrels were reluctant to leave their food.

Galapagos Greater Flamingo Original oil painting by Robert E Fuller £2,100
Image Size: 6 x12.5" Framed: 17.25x22.75"

There are only approximately six hundred Galapagos greater flamingos left and they are never seen en masse. I was lucky enough to see two males having a power struggle for dominance, the one that gets their head highest wins!

For more of my original paintings or for more information please call 01759 368355 or click here to see my website.

Black Grouse Lek

If you've never seen black grouse perform their annual courting ritual, known as a lek, you've really missed a treat. I painted the picture below after spending a week out in freezing temperatures waiting for the fog to lift for long enough to photograph the grouse. 

The spectacular way these birds strut and display their feathers was something I had only seen once before. The display is spellbinding, if at times a little comical. The males charge around with their curiously-curved tails fanned and erect, wings spread and drooped, whilst making a loud continuous bubbling sound. Then, every now and then, they jump in the air and call out before they resume circling again. It makes them look a bit like a remote-controlled toy on the blink.

Meanwhile the dull-feathered females strut nonchalantly through the commotion, occasionally fanning their tail feathers and flirting with the males. For a new painting, I needed some really good photographs to paint from. Black grouse lek in April and will use the same site for the display over many years. It took a quite few phone calls to gain permission from landowners to photograph at two sites, one near Hawes in the Dales and the second in Upper Teesdale. At each location I found a local contact to help me find the lek.

I set off to the Dales for a week at the beginning of April. In the mating season, male and female black grouse gather early in the morning for this communal courtship display and so it was important to get there well before the action began each day. My guide was willing to let me use a hide he had built close to the lek and I agreed to meet him at 4.45am at the bottom of the moor. I followed him up a stony track that seemed to lead high up onto the moor into the clouds.  It was 3°C and the wind blew so hard I was nearly swept off my feet as I got out of the car. 

The sky was black and it was only with the help of my guide’s headlights that I could make out a canvas hide, braced against the wind. The guy ropes were taut and the pegs had been weighed down with boulders to keep the hide from flying off. As I clambered inside with all my camera gear and began to set up, I was reminded of the first time I photographed black grouse in North West Scotland. It was even colder there; I had snow showers to contend with and, back then when I used film cameras, photographing in low light was hard work. I was better prepared this time with warmer clothes and digital cameras, but the weather was still against me. 

I had just got the cameras onto the tripod when I heard the unmistakeable ‘tcheway’ call of the black cock, shortly followed by another one. It sounds a bit like a tyre being let out suddenly. Before long I could see seven male birds, their white bottoms glowing in the gloom. As dawn approached, the noise climaxed. A hen was on the horizon. She wandered through the lek, casually inspecting each male. They were frantic to impress her and fights soon broke out amongst them. 

But she sauntered nonchalantly through them and before wandering to the edge of the lek and watching intently as another female arrived on the scene – the females like to take their time before picking out the fittest and strongest male.

It was a great morning, but by 8am all the action was over and the grouse wandered off to feed. Once their tails are back down and no longer fanned they look like an entirely different species, in fact more like you would expect a grouse to look.

Over the next two days the weather got worse and when I woke at 4am the rain was battering so hard against the window panes that I decided to go back to sleep.

The next day I was awake at 4am as usual. The weather wasn’t great but I didn’t want to lose a third day so I set off for the lek anyway. As I started the drive high up into the hill clouds on the moor, the wind and rain hammered against my windscreen.  But I stuck it out and by 7am the weather had improved a bit. 

I got some quite good shots but was getting edgy; I only had two days left and I still hadn’t got the pictures I wanted. I felt relieved when I watched the weather forecast that night: things were set to brighten. On the fifth day of the trip, I woke even earlier than usual, drew back the curtains and looked out of the window. I could see the stars twinkling brightly, promising a clear day at last.

As I got into the hide it was still dark. There was not a cloud in sight, but that strong wind was still there.  The black cock arrived at 5am and started to lek but as the sun came over the hill a short-eared owl flew by. There was an explosion of whirring wings and in an instant all the birds were gone. Luckily they reappeared 20 minutes later and started lekking again.

I was pretty pleased with the result; so nice to see them with a bit of sun on their backs, which brings out their iridescent sheen. But again by 8am they were off. 

I was due to travel back home on Saturday and decided to give it one last go that morning. Again there was not a cloud in the sky but for the first time all week the wind had dropped. As I waited in the hide in the dark I could hear the haunting call of curlews ringing out across the moor followed by the signal whistle of a golden plover. As the black cock arrived and also began to call, I knew this would be the morning I had waited for. I had been up at 4am for four days and on the last day of this trip it all seemed to be coming together. 

Towards the end of the month I made my second trip, this time to Upper Teesdale to a much bigger lek used by up to 20 males. This time I had to get up at 3am to catch the lekking birds before dawn. Again I was plagued by bitterly cold winds, but the sun came out each day and I was able to get more photographs – plenty to take back to the studio and paint from.To me the black cock lek is one of the most unusual courtship displays I have seen. It is so spectacular you would expect it to be the dance of a tropical bird in an exotic rain forest, not a grouse on a bleak windswept moor in the North of England.

There are just 5,000 black grouse males left. Their decline is mainly due to dramatic changes to their moorland habitat. But the RSPB is restoring moorland reserves with heather and low shrubs for these beautiful birds to feed on. Find out how you can do to help save these beautiful birds at my exhibition: Saving Nature which opens at my gallery in Thixendale this Saturday, November 7th.  

My latest paintings of endangered species from around the world will also be on show alongside all my wildlife photography and video clips from around the world. The exhibition is open daily and runs until Nov 29th.