Day 3 - Wolverine and Black Grouse

The weather forecast looks good for the night and we decided to stick to our plan to go for the forest hide from 16:00 – 22:00 and to move afterwards to the swamp for the black grouse. As we haven’t seen the wolverine so far, we were absolutely happy he came around in the forest hide at 18:00. For about 15 minutes he was jumping around, turning the stones and tree branches on the ground, and climbing up some trees to get the delicious salmon. heads Lots of opportunities to get nice images. The bear showed up as well to give us a final chance to get more stunning images of the king of the forest.

At the last day the Wolverine showed up at the forest hide

At 22:00 we left the forest and drove back to the camp were Kari was already waiting. A short drive to the swamp and a quick introduction for the hide and the behavior of the black grouse and we were ready to set up for the night and the next morning.

The hide was much smaller than in the forest but still good enough for two photographers. Surprisingly, the first group of black grouse already flew in before we even could close the door of the hide. A bit scared by us they were waiting in the trees until situation became quite and they couldn’t see us anymore. At this point, it was about midnight, a group of five black grouses was on the ground and doing there typical sound. Unfortunately, it was too dark to take any pictures but we were so excited that we couldn’t lay down and sleep anymore. A little mistake from our side (noise!) scared the birds away. We already thought “damn, that’s it!” and we will miss the chance because of our own mistake. But the birds returned about one hour later. At 3:00 a.m it lightens up enough to start imaging. Finally! There have been 11 grouses in the arena, running around, making there typical calls and looking for fights. Absolutely awesome!

Black grouse lek

At 6:00 all the black grouses lift up and flew away. What an awesome morning and a great experience. Many thanks to Kari again for giving us that opportunity. We didn’t expect that when planning the trip.

After a good breakfast, we took a nap again and say goodbye to Kari. He was an excellent host and we were absolutely happy during these three days in the hides. We also enjoyed the time in the base camp, the food and the conversations with Kari including lots of funny stories from the previous times when he was a professional filmmaker. When talking about our plan to take photographs of owls at the end of our trip he gave us a contact of a friend who will help us with that. Great!

Kiitos Kari!

But now it’s time for heading north to Martinselkonen which is another 2,5 hour drive…