Close encounter with a grouse of the red kind

On shallow puddles, delicate fans of ice dissolve under the morning sun as we follow the sandy track over Blanchland Moor. These heather uplands, now every tone of brown from straw to sepia, fill the eye with purple every August.

Stopping on a south-facing bank, we share a flask of tea, a stand of thorn trees at our backs for shelter. Nearby is the outlying farmstead of Pennypie House. The name is said to derive from cattle drovers stopping at the farm to buy a pie for a penny, but it may also be a corruption of “penny pay”, a toll asked of travellers on the ancient track. Though it’s only about four miles across, different areas of the moor have colourful names denoting ownership: Burntshieldhaugh Fell, Cowbyers Fell, Bulbeck Common and Birkside Fell.

Two black grouse fly over the track as we walk on, white flashing from the underside of the male’s wings. There’s lots of activity and noise from the red grouse that have paired up over winter before breeding starts in April. It’s hard not to jump as they burst out of the heather with furious wing beats and urgent cries.

From his viewpoint on a small boulder, a male red grouse sees us and comes hurrying across, chattering and muttering like Alice’s White Rabbit. I crouch down as he stalks clockwise round me, his crimson eyebrow wattle vivid over eyes that watch my feet.

It’s rare to get so close to grouse, a delight to study his red-brown feathers, their overlapping zigzag stripes gleaming in the light. His fluffy white legs are like furry breeches extending right down to the toes for winter warmth; this gives grouse and ptarmigan the generic name of lagopus meaning “hare-foot”. He’s so close to me that my camera won’t focus properly.

Strutting and posturing, he makes it clear that this is his territory. Although this is uncommon behaviour, it is not unknown; in 2015 a red grouse stopped cars on a Highland road by refusing to move. Ours chases my heels as we head for Blanchland until he’s sure we’re off his patch.

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