Why the First Hour of Daylight Is Your Best Chance

Red grouse are creatures of habit, and their habits are governed by light. At first light they leave the sheltered patches of heather where they have roosted and move onto the shorter, younger growth to feed, often in loose family groups. The air is still, sound carries further, and the birds are far more interested in breakfast than in you. Arrive in the dark or in the grey half-hour before sunrise. Give your eyes twenty minutes to adjust, and you will begin to pick out shapes on the moor that simply are not visible when you stumble out of the car at nine o'clock with the sun in your face.

The other advantage of dawn is that the wind is usually at its lightest. Red grouse rely on scent and sound, and a still morning means you can approach without your own noise being masked. It also means that when a bird calls, you can pin down the direction within a few degrees rather than guessing as the wind shifts the sound about. Red grouse are resident and territorial all year, so any decent block of heather above roughly 200 metres is worth a look — the Yorkshire Dales, the North York Moors, the North Pennines and the Cheviot fringes all hold good numbers.

Learning the Call Before You See the Bird

Most people hear their first red grouse long before they see one, and they usually mistake it for something else. The classic call is a sharp, chuckling "go-back, go-back, go-back", given by the cock bird and carrying an extraordinary distance on still air. Writers have been rendering it that way for a century because it really does sound like a gruff voice telling you to turn round.

Listen also for a low, rolling "kok-kok-kok" as a bird becomes uneasy, and for a harder, more explosive note at the moment of flushing. Cocks in spring give a harsh, crowing challenge from a tussock or a low wall. Find a recording and play it a few times at home before you go. Curlews, with their rising, liquid whistle, are the usual source of confusion on the way up; skylarks and meadow pipits fill in the gaps once you are on the tops.

Reading the Heather for Signs of Grouse

Heather is food, shelter and nursery for red grouse, and the best moors are a patchwork of different ages. Young, short growth — the kind that springs back after muirburn or cutting — provides tender shoots for feeding. Taller, leggier stands give cover, and it is in these that you will find sitting birds and nests.

Before you rely on your eyes, use these clues:

• Droppings: small, dark, fibrous cylinders, often with a white chalky cap, left in loose piles on tussocks, stones and track edges.
• Dust baths: shallow, scratched-out hollows in dry peat or loose soil, sometimes with a few feathers around the rim.
• Feathers and remains: the legs of red grouse are feathered almost to the toes, and a single moulted feather on the heather is a useful marker of a territory.
• Flattened "forms": oval patches in the heather where a bird has sat and rested, sometimes several in a line along a bank.

Scan along the tops of heather banks, the sunny side of drystone walls, the edges of grouse butts and old trackways. A cock bird on territory will often show as a dark, upright shape against the skyline, chest out, giving you a few precious seconds before he moves.

Walking Quietly and Keeping a Respectful Distance

Red grouse will tolerate a steady walker at fifty to a hundred metres if you keep to a line and do not stop and stare. Inside twenty or thirty metres, a bird will crouch, stretch its neck, then flush with an explosive whirr of wings that stops your heart. If you are seeing that behaviour, you are too close. Step back, change your angle, and give the bird the room it needs.

Never walk deliberately up to a sitting bird. Grouse nest in simple scrapes in the heather between roughly April and June, and a bird flushed repeatedly may abandon eggs or lose chicks to crows and foxes. If you find a nest or a brood, mark the spot in your memory or on a map, walk away, and use binoculars or a long lens. Keep to rights of way and open access land, keep dogs close and quiet, and leave the moor as you found it.

Timing, Kit and Access Rules Worth Knowing

• Best window: late March to early July for calling, displaying and family parties. From 12 August the shooting season opens and some moors are busier; check before you go.
• Time of day: sunrise to about two hours after, and again in the last hour before dusk.
• Kit: 8x42 binoculars, boots with ankle support, gaiters for bog and tussocks, a waterproof, water, an OS map and compass. Add midge repellent from June.
• Access: most moorland is open access land, but dogs must be on a short lead between 1 March and 31 July to protect ground-nesting birds. In Scotland the outdoor access code applies. Never fly a drone over a moor.

Other Moorland Company to Look For

A dawn moor walk rarely delivers only grouse. Curlew, golden plover, lapwing, skylark, meadow pipit and ring ouzel all use the same heather and rushy flushes, and merlin and short-eared owl hunt the same edges. The trick is to stand still for ten minutes once you have heard grouse calling, letting the rest of the moor settle around you. Note down what you see and send your records to your county recorder — several of these species are in steep decline, and a morning's careful count is genuinely useful information.