One of fifteen males – traditional lekking site, Teesdale

We’re on our way up to Scotland, so tonight we called in at the traditional Black Grouse lekking site in Teesdale. No sooner had we entered ‘the drop zone’ when we saw three males feeding in a field close to the road. Scanning around we eventually found three more in the adjacent field. We decided to press on to the lek site proper – cresting the hill, we looked down into the valley to see at least nine more males ‘strutting their stuff’. We only saw a couple of females further up the valley, apparently completely unimpressed with what the ‘fellas’ were up to. In total we saw an incredible 15 males and 2 females – just fabulous!

Traditional Black Grouse lek – Teesdale