There’s an inexorable pull into the pinewoods in these spring early mornings. On the loch, the sun-kissed mist is lifting and a male goldeneye displays, tipping its head back as it ripples across the water. Skeins of overwintering geese are still leaving for their breeding grounds farther north, and yet the summer’s chiffchaffs are also calling; I hear the first willow warblers too. Bright green clover-like leaves foretell the sprinklings of wood sorrel soon to come, and a flock of yellow-green and black streaked siskins flash in the sunlight – but I resist the temptation to follow them into the heart of the woods, for other spring rituals are taking place there.
It’s the time of year for early morning capercaillie leks, where the males congregate in hidden clearings in the middle of the woods to display and attract a mate. Capercaillies are huge members of the grouse family, thought to have inhabited old-growth pinewoods like these since the last ice age. In the UK, they’re only found in the pinewoods of Scotland, with the Cairngorms their stronghold. They’re incredible birds. The females are a cryptic brown, the males even bigger, with a red-rimmed eye, black and white with a fan-like tail that they spread during display. Their decline in Scotland has been precipitous, from more than 20,000 in the 1970s to just over 500 now.
