Pishing messages at the black grouse lek

Great Trossachs forest, Scotland These birds, exhausted but puffed with adrenalin, have been on their feet since dawn

No bluebell has yet shown its colour, no oak has broken a single bud. Spring comes late to these highland glens. But willow warblers have flown in to stir the new season, each dying cadence ringing with life, as exuberant sounding as any mountain burn. Their proclamations carry far, like the peal of church bells, down from a scatter of trees on the hillside to flatter land at the head of the loch.

The low sun of early evening gives the loch a glittering sheen and the stilled air allows drunken "pish" expletives and throaty pigeon-like gobbling noises to carry across the moor to a car that serves as a hide.