Photographing Black Grouse In Wales

As someone who dislikes early starts (and really late nights…), the idea of getting up at 03:15 am, driving an hour to wait and hope that the animal you are wanting to photograph will in fact show up, doesn’t fill me with enthusiasm. However, sometimes you need to make sacrifices and for me that was my precious sleep, and I dragged myself out of bed at 03:30 and eventually made it to the car and headed off for my early morning photography outing.

The location I was heading to was about an hour’s drive away, I wanted to make sure I was early, so that I could secure my photography spot, as everywhere I read said that the parking is limited and can get busy early. I was hoping that as this was a Wednesday morning, it wouldn’t be that busy, but still made it to where I needed to be and parked up at 04:50. Luckily, there was no one else around and I had the lay-by to myself.

Using my car as a hide! Though I can attest to the Volov V40 bring a bit awkward for this! Not sure if I will ever get my seat back to where it was before!

Our subject for today is the Black Grouse, and this site is renowned as one of the best places in Wales to see the males gather in the early mornings to preform their mating courtships, known as leks. I had my windows rolled down and could hear the gathered males calling before I even parked, which was a wonderful sound to behold.

As it was still very dark, I set up my camera gear, and sat and watched the males through my binoculars, as the morning got brighter (there wasn’t a sunrise, more of a brightening of the sky as the clouds had rolled in), I was able to get some of my first video clips. I was using my Sony 200-600mm lens, which at 600mm is an f/6.3, so even at 1/50s, I was at 10,000 ISO and still underexposed….

The first thing I want to say about this location vs the images that I have seen online, is that the grouse are actually rather far away, and not as close to the road as I was led to believe. And this is where I find the Instagram vs reality life a bit tough, as you never know what systems people may be using or how much cropping has been done in the edit. For me, all the images bar one, were in the APS-C mode in my camera, giving me an effective length of 900mm on the long end, this does mean that my final images are 14MP, but that really does not bother me at all. The images will still be fine to add into my photobook of 2025 no problem, but I thought that I should mention that now, so for those of you who do read this post, are under no elusion as to how close I was able to get.

There were about 7 male black grouse in the lekking site, and it was just brilliant to watch and listen to them, the noises they make is pretty unique, so I made sure I brought my proper camera mic, to capture their calls for the video. This was joined with a rowdy Canada goose who was hanging around the site first thing.

As the day brightened up, I was able to start getting my images, I found that my camera did find it a bit hard to focus on the grouse, so ended up doing a fair bit of manual focusing, to make sure I nailed it, and I got some really nice images.

I was also treated to some Skylark’s landing on some rocks and on the ground next to the car, and was able to get some lovely portraits of them.

By about 7:30, the main action at was over, so rather than head straight home, I continued to drive over the moor, in the hopes of seeing some more wildlife that I could photograph.

I didn’t have to go far to see my first subject, a Red Grouse, amongst the heather, and while the heather is definitely not at its peak, I will definitely be coming back in August to try and get some images of the grouse amongst them in all their colourful glory.

A bit further on, there was another Red Grouse, this time amongst some white flowers, and not only that, I spied a female grouse as well! She was much harder to photograph as she was right down in the undergrowth, but I am really happy with these images, and although I was up here to photograph the Black Grouse, these were my favourite images from the day.

All in all, I had the most amazing time up in the Welsh moors, and I can safely say that the 03:15 alarm was definitely worth it (though I think early mornings like this should only happen up to once a week…). I am really happy with the images I got from this morning, especially the ones of the reds, and I will for sure be going back in the summer when the heather is in full bloom.