No deer - Two caper

[ofbiro]

Last Saturday I decided to look for a yearling roebuck and I went up the mountain in dense conifer forest. It was wet, and among the rain drops some small flake fell down.
On the way up, I saw a caper hen walking on the road side. She took of when I was a bit closer.
I reached the high seat, commanding a large clearing, with visibility limited by fog coming and going.
During a moment of better visibility I saw a caper cock landing in the middle of the slope, opening the tail like a turkey and walking around.
The fog came again and the cock disappeared. After a while he appeared quite near the high seat, with the beak toward the sky and singing but only "tick-tick", not "like a whetstone against a scythe" as the hunting stories tell.

This a nice image of the sunny Dolomites in spring.


The capercallie is under the fir...

...as shown here enlarged.


I didn't see any roe, but the sight of not one but two capercallies is not common.

 

[Pine Marten]

That's great to see. I've only ever seen two in my life, one was a cock on a rockfall very much like the one you're showing, in the Vosges in Alsace. The other was a hen that I flushed the one and only time I was invited stalking in Scotland. It startled the socks off me, but I wasn't sure I wanted to mention it to my host when I met him afterwards (he was stalking the other side of the wood) in case what I'd actually seen was a hen pheasant close up. Didn't want to be the daft London type... However, when we met later that morning his first words were "I saw a cock capercaillie!". "Ah well it's funny you say that because I found the hen!".

 

[ofbiro]

Capercallies are not very common on the Alps, however last year I saw one cock at about one km from the high seat I sat in last Saturday.
Years ago, in a different forest in the county I live in, I met several time a hen on the path I was stalking on. Probably she had the nest nearby.

 

[Donkey Basher]

I recall one flying directly over my head when I was sat on a rock beside the road waiting for Moose in Norway a few years back, stunning experience!

 

[Ratel]

I nearly trod on a cock bird once in a seaside forest on MOD land, gave me a hell of a scare as he flushed. Saw a hen with four chicks a few years back as I drove through a bit of forest in the Caingorms area. Later that day I had a Mexican stand off with a huge cock bird as I was stalking Roe in the same bit.