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.

Hide in place

A sunny spring day made me head out to the wild after a long break. With the temperature just below freezing, there was a nice crust layer on the snow that carried my skis well. Even with a sledge in tow skiing was light and enjoyable.

I located a lonely birch tree at the swamp and dug up the bottom part of my hide and loaded the boards on the sledge:
I pulled the sledge to the same spot I have used for the last couple of springs, right were the black grouses have their mating season shows. To secure the hide in place, I made some "dead men" from branches and buried them under the snow:
When I was done, this is what the hide looked like:
Judging by the tracks in the snow, the hide is in a good place, there are tracks of grouses clashing just a few meters from the hide:
On the way back to the car, I spotted these tracks in the snow:
I won't tell who / what made the tracks just yet. Anybody want to take a guess?

Morning grouses, again

Yes. I must be crazy. The alarmclock went off at 2 am. I had slept for about three hours. I turned the coffeepercolator on, to get the caffeine dose my body needed and took the younger dog out for a few minutes. When I got back inside, the coffee was ready and as I sipped my morning cup, I made some tea for my thermos that I was taking with me for the mornings outing. I put the thermos and some sandwiches in my backpack along with the rest of my gear and loaded the whole thing in the car.

A little after three I was at the end of the dirtroad and started skiing towards my hide. After the first hundred meters I got a harsh reminder of how important it is to check EVERYTHING, even for a short outing. This time it was the bind on my ski that broke. I managed a quick fix to it in the middle of the forest. (Detailed description of what happend will be posted later)

As I got closer to the hide, things got rather wet. There was a thin layer of snow on top a thick layer of wet slush and water on top some ice at the swamp. At some places I was lucky that my boots were long enough. The hide had stayed dry, but was surrounded on three sides by very deep water. All I could do was hope that the whole thing would not slide off the small mound it was sitting on.

I got into the hide and put on warm clothing and set up my gear. Then I had nothing to do but wait and have some tea and sandwiches. It was 4:35 am. that I had everything set up. Since I had nothing better to do, I put a few short updates for the folks at home on how things are going thru FaceBook on my mobile.

As the sun began to rise, there was enough light that I could see out of the hide. The sunrise was not as clear as I had hoped for, the thin layer of clouds gave the sunrise a gray/bluish tone instead of the yellow or orange that I wanted:
I was feeling a bit cold and maybe that is why I was also somewhat frustrated. I was starting to wonder if this would be one more entry in the long line of "I went but got no pictures" trips. Just as there was enough light to start seriously thinking of taking pictures a few grouses and some lapwings landed close to the hide:
The grouses made a lot of noise and strutted around quite a bit, but no real confrontations took place. The pecking order seemed to be clear to everyone:
All of a sudden, all the birds flew away. I spotted them landing several hundreds of meters from the hide. I was thinking of packing my gear and heading for home, when more and more grouses started landing, until there were about twenty birds around my hide. Soon lapwings arrived in great numbers also:
This second set of grouses was really active and skirmishes erupted all the time as the birds fought for the best spots:
After the grouses had had enough, the "clean up crew" arrived and seemed to be very interested in the spots where the toughest battles had been fought:
I'll post more pictures of the morning when I have had a chance to look thru all of the pictures I took.

Too cold

The weather forecast was correct, it was well below freezing at night and a sunny morning followed. Nea and I headed off in the middle of the night and skied to the hide. Along the way we stopped a couple of times to look at the stars. Being away from city lights, we could see just how many stars there are in the sky.

We got to the hide nice and early, there was only the slightest hint of light on the horizon. We unpacked our gear and crawled into the hide. Once inside, we put on plenty of warm clothing and started setting up our cameras in anticipation of the morning and hopefully arriving grouses. That is when things took bad turn on us. Eventhough Nea had enough clothing on to cause the average eskimo to die of heat exhaustion, the cold of the night got thru. We tried to tough it out for awhile and tried to come up with some way of keeping Nea warm, but it was hopeless. In the end we had no choice, but to pack our gear and head back to the car and the warmth of home.

Skiing back to the car warmed Nea up enough that she felt good enough to stop and take a few pictures along the way:
These few quick snapshots saved the whole trip, the sadness of not being able to take pictures of grouses was forgotten. As we skied along, we did hear grouse calls in the distance, but did not ponder on them for long, we decided to talk about the tracks on the snow, the beautiful colors of the sunrise and what we would be photographing when the weather becomes warmer. Nea did ask me if the birds would flee if we skied to where the sounds were coming from.

At the end of our outing, Nea and I agreed that we could go skiing and taking pictures, but sitting in the hide with freezing temperatures is a bit too rough for Nea at the moment. Now we are just waiting for spring to really arrive and the snow to melt so that we could go for a walk-about to see what we can find for us to see and photograph.

Morning grouses

We headed out later than I had planned. Somehow I just could not get out of bed. Luckily I woke up early enough that we got to head out in darkness. On the way to the swamp, I was sure that I had managed to ruin the whole trip, and silently swore the whole drive over. My foul mood eased over a bit when we parked the car at the end of the dirtroad. It was still pitch dark. Nea was a little scared as we started skiing in the darkness using our headlamps to get a little help to keep us on the right track. As our journey progressed, she relaxed more and more and quite enjoyed herself after awhile. The eastern horizon was getting lighter by the minute when we arrived at the edge of the swamp but lucky for us, the skiing got easier on the swamp, and we managed to exceed our planned speed of advance. We gained a few minutes on our last leg to the hide, arriving approximately half an hour later than I had planned. We put on warmer clothing and set up our photography equipment. While we were waiting for something to happen, we had some sandwiches and tea.

My companion was just about ready to call the trip a washout and head for home, when I noticed that a flock of about twenty grouses had appeared close to our hide:
Nea was having a great time taking pictures, as the grouses were putting on their show:
After the grouses left, I started packing our gear and Nea skiid to take a look at the tracks left on the snow by the birds. When I had managed to get everything packed, Nea came back and told me to go and take pictures of the tracks:
On the way back to the car, I took a some quick snapshots, mainly as a memento of my girls first grouseouting:
Nea took these pictures:
All in all, the trip was a success. On the way home, Nea asked me if we could go and see and photograph grouses again sometime. I promised her we surely would.

Waiting and worries

I was looking at my blogposts from last year and noticed that my first observations of black grouses was from the april 2nd posting. That one was only tracks on the surface of the snow. April 7th I got to see the birds, eventhough they were too far from the hide for good pictures. The reason why I was going thru the dates is that I am planning to head out on sunday to take pictures of black grouses. I am heading out a week earlier than last year. I'm quite worried if the grouses have started mating season or not and will there be anything to photograph on sunday.

Normally I wouldn't be worried at all. It would not be the first or the last time that I head out and come back without any pictures worth mentioning. This time however, the pressure is on in force. A seven-year-old naturephotography enthusiast is coming along with me, and she can hardly wait to see grouses and take pictures of them. I am also trying to figure out how much clothing to bring along for her. Sitting still in the hide with temperatures well below freezing requires quite a bit of clothing to keep things comfy. Skiing to the hide in the middle of the night has me worried also. I hope the trip will not be too tough. It is also hard to estimate what our speed of advance will be for the skiing. If things go as planned, we should arrive at the hide in darkness, but at such a time that we don't have to wait for hours on end for the sun to rise and enough light for photography.

Keep your fingers crossed that everything goes as planned, this is an important trip.

Setting the hide

In anticipation of the approaching black grouse mating season, I took my hide to the swamp. Early in the morning the sun hadn't melted the icy crust on top of the snow and skiing was light, eventhough I was pulling quite a load with me. The load of gear looked like this:

After reaching the spot where I had planned to set the hide, I dug a hole in the snow for it. This year there was quite a bit more to dig than on previous occasions:

The completed hide in its' snowhole looks like this:

After getting everything set up, it was time for a small break:

On the way back, I had time to observe and capture some animal tracks. These two went on top of another for quite some time, but headed their separate ways in the end:

Tough scouting

Today I was able to go the swamp for the first time in quite awhile. After a few days of sunshine and sub zero temperatures, the weather had changed to +4 C and a steady gray overcast. This never fails, whenever the weather is good, there is no chance of being able to go out and when I have the opportunity to go, the weather is not even close to ideal for photography. I managed to get my car parked at a crossing of two dirtroads and hopped onto my skis. After the first kilometer or so, I realized that this would be a much tougher trip than I had planned. The warm temperature caused the top snow to be extremely damp and it started to stick to the bottom of my skis. Moving along was more in the style of walking with skis than actually skiing, but I kept on going and took a few snapshots along the way.

I looked at this depression in the snow with some concern as soon as I noticed it from further away. I often feel a bit dubious of depressions and cracks in otherwise smooth and level snowsurfaces.

This time my concern was not unfounded, the unfrozen area was quite large, extending partly even underneath the even looking snowsurface:

Otherwise the landscape was rather bare and steady gray. There weren't even any fresh animal tracks to be seen. All in all quite boring:

I made my way to the spot where I had my hide in the fall and stopped for a cup of tea and a bite to eat. The picture shows well how the snow kept sticking to the skis and slowed my progress quite effectively:

I had left flooring of my hide leaning against a small tree in the fall and after some digging I was able to check that they were still there:

Next time around I'll have to bring along a snowshovel and a sledge so that I can move the planks to a different location. There I'll set my hide up again to wait for the black grouse mating season to begin. As I was taking my break, I set the camera up on my tripod and took a picture of myself. I think my expression says something about todays trip:

I didn't take the compulsory closeup shot of a pinecone, but opted for a moss closeup instead: