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Tetrao urogallus
The Capercaille is the largest wild poultry in Sweden. The male is really beautiful, predominantly black, but has a blue-green iridescent breast, white markings on his wings, and a red bar along the top edge of the eye. It can grow up to 90-100 cm between wings, and weigh about 4-6 kg's. The hen is a lot smaller and has got perfect woodland camouflage. They are quite shy, except during mating time, when the male becomes fairly agressive and you wouldn't want to meet one when youre out foraging. If you do, you better turn around and run. Fast.
They are common all over northern Europe and Asia, in places where there grows a lot of pines.
The shot was taken in Småland where I lived a couple of years ago, and there were plenty of Capercailles. Where theres plenty of Capercailles theres also plenty of cranberries. In these parts of Västergötland, where I live now, there's neighter Pines, Capercailles or Cranberries. Too bad. I miss them. The size of the footprint was aprox 8 cm's.
Spotted on Jan 28, 2009
Submitted on Feb 23, 2012
1 Comment
Congratulations this great spotting has been featured in the Project Noah blog! http://blog.projectnoah.org/post/3823297...