Last grouse pictures for this spring

When the alarm chimed in the middle of the night, I really didn't feel like going. Somehow it just didn't feel nice. After about 15 minutes of struggling I got out of bed and made my way to the kitchen to put the coffee on. While the coffee was dripping, I had time to get dressed and take the dogs out. After having my requisite two (large) mugs of coffee, I felt awake enough to load my gear in the car and head out.

The dirtroad was barely driveable, the warm weather we had for the last couple of days had softened the surface in some places, and to make matters worse, a tractortrailer hauling lumber or some other large vehicle had left its tracks in the surface of the road. In my car, I had to be carefull not to get stuck. I really need to get that 4x4 I've been looking for for some time now..

At the end of the road I put on my skis and headed towards the hide. The problems started as soon as I got moving. The path I normaly use was pretty much bare, the snow had melted away. The young forest next to the path is so tight with saplings that trying to get thru it with a sled in tow was not a good option. Luckily next to the path was a narrow strip of snowcovered ground that I could use to move on, though much slower than I am used to. At the edge of the swamp I ran into the next problem. The border between the forest and the swamp was completely bare, and even the ice under the snow had melted. I took my skis off and after some scouting, managed to find a route accross that was shallow enough for my boots. The sledge floated well and came accross almost dry, even with the weight of my gear on it. At this point, I was happy I decided not to take my daughter Nea out for photography on sunday as there is no way she would have made it accross without getting her feet wet. We would have had to turn around at the edge of the swamp or suffered freezing temperatures with wet clothing at the hide. Either way, the joy of a good naturephotography outing would have been far from what we would have been going thru.

After making my way thru the edge area, the going became really easy. The swamp was covered in a good layer of ice, with a few centimeters of ice crusted snow on top, making skiing almost effortless. Even the sled seemed to glide towards the hide almost on its own. When I got the hide, my problems continued. The lines holding the hide in place had given and the wind had blown my hide over, breaking the other arch of the tent. I managed to fix the arch with some line and got the hide set up again.

I got in, set up my gear and once again got to watch a beatifull sunrise:
As the light increased, the grouses started to arrive:
Last time around, there were 40 or so birds about, this time I counted only twenty. As the birds kept arriving, disputes over the best spots broke out:
I managed to get some decent pictures of the clashes, I will post them as soon as I have managed to go thru all of the mornings pictures. A lot of the pictures are blurres, because the clashes happened mainly as the birds arrived just around sunrise and there was simply not enough light to stop the movement when taking the pictures.

When the birds had sorted their pecking order out, I got to take some nice pictures of single birds, as their positioning and the light matched up well:
When the grouses were done and had left, I took down the hide and packed it on the sledge and started skiing back to my car:
I took a slight detour and dropped the bottom part of the hide at a different location in anticipation of the coming summer. The tent part of the hide I took home with me to dry it and fix the parts broken by the wind.