Sunrise

The alarm goes off, but I’m already awake. I turn it off quickly—I don’t want to disturb Isabel and Milo, sleeping peacefully beside me. I, on the other hand, have slept restlessly. The kind of sleep that comes before important sunrises. I leave the room, measuring every step. Clothes and gear are ready on the couch from the night before. I get dressed in silence, eyelids heavy with a sleep that doesn’t want to leave. A quick coffee—and I’m outside, in a quiet, cool May night. I drive through the darkness until I reach the start of the trail. This lek is convenient—just a ten-minute walk. I know another one, much less accessible, but it’s the one that made me fall in love with photographing this species. The most adventurous, the most magical. I could tell so many stories about photographing black grouse. The first time in a lek, under a sky full of stars that made me feel small—and more than a little afraid. Or the time I came home empty-handed because mouflons had scared the grouse away. Or when I spent three hours in a hide under heavy snowfall, freezing—but came back with epic images. I switch on my headlamp. The beam cuts through the darkness of a clear, star-filled night. I load all my gear onto my shoulders and step onto the snow-covered trail. Every now and then I sink in. I curse. My body protests against a wake-up time beyond all reason. I locate the lek. I unload everything onto the ground. With my feet, I level the snow to create a flat spot for the hide—built specifically to stay hidden from the animals and photograph them without disturbance. My movements are mechanical, familiar. I’ve done this before. I fix the hide, throw another camouflage cover over it, open the chair, set up the tripod, crouch down and close myself inside. A blanket over my legs. It’s 3 a.m., heading into the coldest hours of the night—the ones just before dawn. I position the camera so it can adjust to the colder temperature. “Have you ever witnessed a sunrise in the mountains? Climbing up while it’s still dark and waiting for the sun to rise is a spectacle no human-made experience can match. At a certain moment, before the sun appears, there is a tremor—not in the air, but something that makes the grass quiver, the trees shiver—and a thrill runs through your skin. For me, it is the thrill of creation that the sun brings every morning.” I feel that same thrill Mario Rigoni Stern speaks of, rising along my spine—almost like an orgasm. With the first light of day, a soft rhythmic sound rises—hisses and bubbling notes. We’re there, I think. Then a sudden wingbeat shakes the thin fabric of the hide. A male has just flown over me. Another lands in front. I stay still. The light is still weak—ISO is high, shutter speeds slow. No matter how good your gear is, without light, there’s no image. Minutes pass. The settings improve. I try different compositions. I want to avoid the obvious close-up—I want to show where the subject lives. To merge landscape and wildlife photography. It’s not easy. But I believe this is what makes the difference, if your goal is to communicate something. Two females arrive in the lek. The males go wild. They face each other while the female watches from behind—almost puzzled. They fight fiercely. Then one withdraws and mates with her. I saw everything—but I missed the moment. I didn’t shoot. It doesn’t matter. I’ll keep that moment in my memory instead of on an SD card. Or maybe it’s like that scene in The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, where the photographer doesn’t take the shot and says: “Sometimes I don’t shoot. If I like a moment… I like it for me. I don’t want the distraction of the camera. I just want to stay in it.” I feel that deeply—especially with black grouse. Because this experience goes beyond photography. It’s something else entirely. Witnessing a lek is not just wildlife photography—it’s something that almost transcends a religious ritual. This kind of photography demands ethics. Disturbing these animals doesn’t just mean missing the shot—it can compromise reproduction, and therefore the survival of the species. Watching their fights and courtship displays feels like attending a sacred ritual—something to approach with reverence. Practically, this means waking up in the middle of the night, being able to move through the mountains in darkness, often on difficult terrain. You must know how to set up a hide—like a small tent, camouflaged to blend into the environment. Then comes the hardest part: staying inside it for hours, barely moving, while the cold of the night freezes your extremities. You can only leave when the last grouse has flown back to the trees. This is not easy. It cannot be improvised. The failure rate is high. But when everything works, the satisfaction is immense. Because of the species’ fragility and rarity, lek locations are closely guarded secrets. A careless approach can do more damage than a hunter’s shotgun.

The black grouse—Lyrurus tetrix—is widespread across northern Europe, but in the Alps it survives only in small populations, mostly where human presence is limited. The male is black with greenish reflections, with a lyre-shaped tail used in courtship displays. The female is smaller, less visible, with a camouflaged brown plumage. Their senses are extremely sharp. At the slightest sign of danger, they take flight. Their diet includes berries, buds, and insects. The mating season runs from mid-March to late May. Males are polygamous. Females build nests among rocks, lay around ten eggs, and raise the chicks alone. Now the sun is behind me. Its light paints the sky pink, while the mountains burn in gold—enrosadira. Two males stand in front of me, facing each other on the snowy ridge, the sky behind them. Click. Click. Click. One spreads its wings in challenge. Click. Click. Click. I am completely inside the moment. I stop shooting. I look out from the hide, holding my breath. These moments belong only to me—and to the grouse. Waking up in the night finally makes sense.This sunrise truly mattered.