Black Grouse Lek in Upper Teesdale

  1. https://youtu.be/kfrKEqVzTUs

This is a Black Grouse Lek film recorded in Upper Teesdale under licence by a well known photographer in that area and from a safe distance. Don’t forget it is illegal to get close to a Black Grouse Lek. Although Black Grouse are not fully protected in law. At this present time there is a voluntary ban on shooting Black Grouse. And the owners of the various moors won’t let anyone hunt or shoot on there moors if anyone shoots and kills a Black Grouse on purpose or even if a Black Grouse is accidentally killed. As the Black Grouse have dramatically declined over much  of the UK and Upper Teesdale in County Durham is one of the strongholds of the Black Grouse in the UK of which I’ll visiting later this this month with my local RSPB Group as we visited Upper Teesdale 5 years ago! The film is around 15 minutes long, so that you can have an idea how unique this is in UK wildlife and amazing sight and sound of the Black Grouse Lek!

  • Its well worth a watch Ian, we take a very small party every year to watch this from cars along with another similar site where we get out of the cars and scope the birds from the farmers yard
  • The only Gamebird fully protected in law and in Scotland is the Capercaillie and that didn’t happen until 2004. Another rare Gamebird the Ptarmigan is not fully protected by law. The only reason the Ptarmigan is not shot is the height above 3000 feet above sea level. I saw the Ptarmigan once in my life as both mysel, my brother, mother and father where walking in the Cairngorms in June, not the Winter and on a glorious hot and sunny day. But despite that there was still some snow on the Cairngorms unlike now sadly and we saw the two parents with the five young Ptarmigan behind there parents. They where remarkably tame and so close to us compared to other Game birds and where unperturbed about us being so close. That’s the only time I’ve seen any Ptarmigan in the wild in my whole life and the year probably around 1961 and I would have been 9 years old and became interested in birdwatching around 1958 as born in 1952.

  • I really  hope you get on your groups visit  to Teesdale Ian it is a great day out. When  we do a group  visit  there for the Blackcock  lek people  are always  fascinated  by the action. We usually  return  via Arkengarthdale where, with the farmers  help, we can watch  both male and female  feeding  in his fields without  disturbing  the  birds. The farmer is very proud  of  his birds I sometimes  think he has  names for them.