Dear friends,
Last week we spend a terrific week in Finland. We (Martine and Jacky Launoy, Erik van Velden, Chris van Rijswijk, and me) joined Han Bouwmeester for a try-out journey to Oulu, Finland. Our goal was to photograph lekking black grouses. A wildlife experience of the first class in a amazing setting with beautiful weather. We had to wake up every night at around 2.30 in order to be on time inside of our hides at the lekking site. The hides were situated in two different swamps in the middle of a taiga forest. Hides with chairs were available, as well as hides with matresses for low angle shots. I preferred the later ones because the contact with the birds was most intense.
walking to the lekking side at night
it's me laying in the hide (thanx Han)
Every morning we were treated with about 10 lekking males around our hides. The sound and the atmosphere that they produce is hard to describe. The males arrived about an hour before sunrise. It's a mystery to me why they always come to the same area of a few square hundred meters within a swamp of several kilometers wide. I constantly had the impression of being a spectator in a medieval theatre. The males are walking around in their own territories of a few square meter while making strange hissing and bubbling sounds. Once in a while they have to defend their own territories against intruders with fights and impressing behaviour. Their hormones got even more activated when the females showed themselves in the arena.
impressing behaviour
fighting for the territories
posing femaleThere is more to come in the coming two weeks. Later this week I will post some backlight pictures of the grouses. The other birds of this Finland trip will follow next week. Hope you liked it so far. I'm looking forward to see you back on the blog and please feel free to leave your reaction/feedback.
Dirk-Jan
