Less than two hours’ drive from the Aude is one of the 10 most mountainous countries on the planet; the Principality of Andorra. Sandwiched between its neighbours of France and Spain, this tiny country is most visited for one of two reasons; skiing and shopping.
Culturally it feels like Catalonia, but with certain differences; it is very affluent with a booming tourist industry, and the life expectancy is the second highest in the world.
We were there for other reasons; it also has the highest density in the Pyrenees of a bird that I have never seen; the capercaillie, or Grand Tétras in French.
The English name, or rather the Scottish Gaelic, is a corruption of capal coille, ‘Horse of the woodland’. The native Scottish population became extinct in the late 18th Century – such a large bird is clearly a desirable addition to the dining table – but has been reintroduced.
Jonathan Kemp
It is a rare bird of the high mountains, a member of the grouse family, and more than justifying its grand title; the males are enormous, weighing some four to five kilos, and can grow up to 90 centimetres long, including the tail.
The species is one of the most sexually dimorphic – that is to say the difference in size – of any living bird, the hens being about 60 centimetres long.
The males have beautiful plumage, brown wings, dark necks with an iridescent green chest, a startling red eye patch, and truly magnificent fan tail feathers, black with white spots like calligraphy.
The powerful beak is a stained ivory yellow. I definitely would not like to be pecked by one.
The best way to see capercaillies is to find the ‘lek’, a dancing ground in a selected area of forest, where the males gather to go through extraordinary strutting and clucking displays in order to attract the females, who discreetly admire – or not – from the sidelines.
The shy females are much smaller, a third of the size of the males, and are mainly shades of brown, camouflaged to blend in with the undergrowth of the mature coniferous forests.
The lek (Swedish for ‘play’) comes to a peak in May, and you would be ill-advised to get too close to a hormone charged-male with his powerful beak, they are capable of attacking both humans and vehicles.
When two males choose to fight each other they can do serious damage, and can even kill each other. Anybody who has kept a much smaller aggressive poultry cock will understand that they are not to be taken lightly.
Jonathan Kemp
Walking up through very rough terrain, high enough for some snow to be still on the ground, the first sign we saw were large groups of brown cylindrical droppings (Fr. crottes)on the ground under certain trees where they have spent the night.
From October the poor diet of dry needles gives this light colour; in Spring the berries, mainly bilberry, rhododendrons, moss and the fresh needles darken the frequent – up to 20 times a night – droppings.
As the lek starts at dawn, you have to spend the night in a hide tent from early in the evening before, before dusk they will gather to roost in the pines at night scattered around the lek.
They move out to the smallest branches that will take their weight, in order to avoid surprise attacks from mustelids such as pine martens.
In order not to disturb the females, we knew that we would not be allowed out of the tent until the lek had finished around midday next morning, so had come prepared for a sojourn.
Territory
Jonathan Kemp
The first sign – soon after dawn – was the fluttering of wings as they came down to ground.
In an area of about 100 metres diameter, we could see four males, fairly spread out so that they avoided coming into contact with each other.
As luck had it, my tent seemed to be the centre where the alpha male was holding his territory. There was a female under the trees, nearby, making a soft encouraging cluck, and I believe there were at least two different clucks that I could hear.
In this species it is the males that make the most noise. Raising his head to the sky he utters a series of accelerating clicks, like a ping-pong ball bouncing, twitching his head with each bounce, finishing with a scratchy hissing, sometimes accompanied by fluttering wing beats.
It is not a loud sound, so finding the lek in mountain woodlands requires much research by the expert guide.
The lek carried on for five hours; at one point the male in front of me ran across a snowdrift to take up a station three metres behind me, bashing the tent as he rushed past, whether on purpose I do not know. A testosterone-charged male capercaillie is not a shy bird…
He then displayed for another couple of hours, sometimes perching in the low branches, before going back to the trees where he started from, eventually flying up into the higher branches to feed a little, before dropping down to wander away into wet forest.
It was a lot of effort culminating into a brief mating, after which it will be up to the female to build a ground scrape with some open ground downhill to fly through if necessary.
There she will hatch the eggs and supply some food, mainly insects, for her babies. The male plays no part in the childcare, and no doubt is in poor condition after several weeks of all that posturing, and will need to feed up before the rigours of winter.
We too, after we were liberated from our cramped tents after 17 hours, were quite pleased to be able to stretch a little, and prepare for the descent to the valley below.
Displays
I was reminded of the Indian and Pakistani strutting soldiers as they face off at the border crossings, with their elaborate crested uniforms; there is a similar sense of contained tension, only occasionally breaking out into actual violence. Clearly the human version is modelled on these sort of bird displays.
Outside of this period of the year they are actually difficult to find, living in the woodlands of the high mountains and being birds that prefer to walk rather than fly.
They are so large and heavy that flying is exhausting for them, so if you come across them on a hike it is best to give them a wide detour as, if forced to fly, they might crash into a deer fence, a major cause of death, or in dense forest, they can hit trees if panicked.
In southern Europe they are vulnerable, and in Scotland have once more become very rare indeed. In France there is an agreement to put a moratorium on hunting from 2022 to at least 2027, to see whether numbers in France bounce back.
