Capercaillie Lek Count Report 2026

Caper­cail­lie Lek Count Report 2026

Con­tents Intro­duc­tion …………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 1 How lek sur­veys are con­duc­ted ………………………………………………………………………….. 2 2026 sum­mary res­ults ……………………………………………………………………………………… 2 Key obser­va­tions from the 2026 lek sur­veys ……………………………………………………….. 3 Min­im­um num­ber of males coun­ted at lek sites in Scot­land 2018 — 2026 ………………… 4 Min­im­um num­ber of males coun­ted at lek sites in Spe­cial Pro­tec­tion Areas 2015 — 2026 …. 5 Con­clu­sion ……………………………………………………………………………………………………. 10

Intro­duc­tion

Lek counts are used to mon­it­or caper­cail­lie num­bers in Scot­land and have been car­ried out across the spe­cies’ range since 2002. The sur­veys involve licensed sur­vey­ors, coordin­ated by the RSPB Caper­cail­lie Advis­ory Officer, count­ing the num­ber of male caper­cail­lie (cocks) attend­ing known lek sites where the birds gath­er to breed.

The res­ults rep­res­ent the min­im­um num­ber of cock birds recor­ded, rather than an over­all pop­u­la­tion estim­ate, as caper­cail­lie do not attend leks every morn­ing. This means some birds will inev­it­ably be missed, so the counts provide only a par­tial dataset.

A total of 184 lekking males were recor­ded In 2026, an increase of 41 birds com­pared with 2025. While the res­ults do not provide a full pop­u­la­tion estim­ate, they offer a help­ful insight into pop­u­la­tion trends and help inform loc­al caper­cail­lie management.

The Caper­cail­lie Nation­al Sur­vey, which has been repeated every six years since the early 1990s, sur­veys caper­cail­lie across their range in Scot­land and is used to inform nation­al pop­u­la­tion estim­ates. Res­ults from the most recent sur­vey can be found through this link: Fur­ther declines of the West­ern Caper­cail­lie Tet­rao urogal­lus in Scot­land as shown by the 2021 – 2022 winter survey

How lek sur­veys are conducted

As caper­cail­lie are a leg­ally pro­tec­ted spe­cies under the Wild­life and Coun­tryside Act 1981, lek sur­veys are car­ried out under a Sched­ule 1 licence issued by NatureScot. Sur­vey­ors are trained and fol­low a strict pro­tocol designed to gath­er accur­ate data while min­im­ising the risk of disturbance.

Lek loc­a­tions can shift over time, so caper­cail­lie forests are often ​“cold searched”, with sur­vey­ors car­ry­ing out day­time walk-throughs to check poten­tial lek sites for signs of activ­ity and identi­fy hot­spots. These are then fol­lowed up with early morn­ing lek sur­veys, begin­ning from around 4am, which take place from mid-April to early May.

Lek counts involve sur­vey­ors count­ing lekking cocks from hides, which are entered the even­ing before and occu­pied overnight to min­im­ise dis­turb­ance. The num­ber of vis­its to each lek is kept to a min­im­um and leks are gen­er­ally only sur­veyed once to reduce dis­turb­ance. At lek sites atten­ded by only a single bird, where indi­vidu­als can be more mobile, sur­vey­ors carry out an early morn­ing walk-through sur­vey rather than count­ing from a hide.

In recent years, a small num­ber of lek sites have also been mon­itored using cam­er­as. This year, a thermal ima­ging drone was tri­alled at three act­ive lek sites in Strath­spey. The drone was oper­ated under licence and pro­duced mixed res­ults. More inform­a­tion is avail­able for land man­agers inter­ested in learn­ing more about the trial.

2026 sum­mary results

• A total of 184 lekking males were counted.
• This is an increase of 41 lekking males com­pared to 2025 and the highest num­ber of lekking males recor­ded since 2018.
• A total of 170 lekking males were recor­ded in the Cairngorms Nation­al Park. This is an increase of 39 com­pared to 2025.
• Female caper­cail­lie (hens) are more dif­fi­cult to count, as they move in and out of lek sites and tend to remain close to the ground. How­ever, at least 1 hen was recor­ded at most lek sites and the most hens seen at one time was 5.
• In Deeside, 5 lekking males were recor­ded. This matches the fig­ure recor­ded in 2025 and rep­res­ents the low­est count on record.
• In Moray­shire, 2 lekking males with a hen were recorded.
• There was no evid­ence of caper­cail­lie in Perthshire.
• No lek sites in Don­side were surveyed.

Key obser­va­tions from the 2026 lek surveys

• Con­di­tions at the start of the sur­vey peri­od were mixed, with rain and wind caus­ing some lek counts in more exposed areas to be can­celled or repeated. How­ever, weath­er con­di­tions improved around the peak of lekking activ­ity from 20 April onwards, provid­ing good con­di­tions for counting.
• Sur­vey effort remained con­sist­ent with 2025 across the lek sites that were monitored.
• Count­ing on most land­hold­ings began earli­er than in 2025, typ­ic­ally from around 15 April. Last year, some areas did not begin counts until 18 April.
• The largest lek recor­ded 16 cocks in attend­ance and two leks recor­ded 15 cocks. All three lek sites are in Strath­spey and adja­cent to large areas of bog woodland.
• The largest increases in lekking male num­bers were recor­ded in Strath­spey forests, where man­age­ment has focused on hab­it­at improve­ment through cattle graz­ing, cut­ting the field lay­er using robot­ic flails, redu­cing the impacts of pred­a­tion and dis­turb­ance, and remov­ing deer fences with­in 1km of act­ive lek sites.
• Cock birds began lekking from around 4am, with activ­ity declin­ing around 6am. On some lek sites, activ­ity increased again around 7am with the arrival of hens and con­tin­ued through to mid-morning.
• Hens atten­ded leks earli­er this year, from around 15 April rather than 19 – 20 April and con­tin­ued attend­ing through to 30 April. As a res­ult, the over­all peri­od of lekking activ­ity was longer in 2026 than in 2025.
• In 2025, three cocks were recor­ded dis­play­ing on well-used paths in Strath­spey. These birds returned to dis­play in the same areas this year. A new lek site in Aber­nethy which formed in 2025 remained occu­pied by two of the cocks known to fre­quent well-used paths, along­side hens and two addi­tion­al cocks this year. To pro­tect this lek from dis­turb­ance, signs were deployed again this year ask­ing people not to use the paths closest to the lek before 8.30am until 15 May. The signs were developed by the Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity and NatureScot and formed part of the wider Lek It Be cam­paign which aims to ensure caper­cail­lie are not dis­turbed dur­ing the lekking period.
• Dur­ing April, caper­cail­lie sight­ings and signs were repor­ted to the RSPB from areas pre­vi­ously thought to be extinct for caper­cail­lie, ran­ging from upper Deeside to north Moray­shire. This is encour­aging for the range and dis­tri­bu­tion of caper­cail­lie, and these areas will be sur­veyed after the breed­ing season.

Min­im­um num­ber of males coun­ted at lek sites in Scot­land 2018 — 2026

	2018	2019	2021	2022	2023	2024	2025	2026
Moray and Nairn	9	4	4	2	1	0	1	2
Strath­spey	165	155	127	132	147	136	126	165
East­er Ross	9	9	10	8	14	7	11	12
Deeside and Donside	12	11	7	5	5	10	5	5
Perth­shire	1	1	1	2	1	0	0	0
Total num­ber of males counted	196	180	149	149	168	153	143	184

(Chart: Min­im­um num­ber of males coun­ted at lek sites in Scot­land 2018 – 2026, show­ing trends for Moray & Nairn, Strath­spey, East­er Ross, Deeside & Don­side, Perth­shire, and Total.)

Data from 2020 is not included as most lek sites were not coun­ted due to Cov­id-19 restric­tions. In 2019, the meth­od­o­logy changed to only count­ing birds seen at lek sites, instead of also includ­ing signs seen, e.g. feath­ers, droppings.

Min­im­um num­ber of males coun­ted at lek sites in Spe­cial Pro­tec­tion Areas

The primary pur­pose of a Spe­cial Pro­tec­tion Area (SPA) is to pro­tect and safe­guard hab­it­ats for Annex I bird spe­cies, ensur­ing they have safe areas for breed­ing, feed­ing and rest­ing. Sites sup­port­ing more than 1% of the breed­ing caper­cail­lie pop­u­la­tion were des­ig­nated as SPAs between 1990 and 2006. There are 11 caper­cail­lie SPAs in Scot­land (see fol­low­ing graphs). Loch Lomond, Glen Tanar, and Darnaway and Leth­en SPAa no longer hold act­ive caper­cail­lie lek sites, although caper­cail­lie are still recor­ded peri­od­ic­ally at the lat­ter two sites. Caper­cail­lie became extinct in Loch Lomond in 2008.

(Chart: Aber­nethy SPA — Min­im­um num­ber of lekking males in the SPA, 2015 – 2026) (Chart: Anagach SPA — Min­im­um num­ber of lekking males in the SPA, 2015 – 2026) (Chart: Bal­loch­buie SPA — Min­im­um num­ber of lekking males in the SPA, 2015 – 2026) (Chart: Cairngorms SPA — Min­im­um num­ber of lekking males in the SPA, 2015 – 2026) (Chart: Craigmore SPA — Min­im­um num­ber of lekking males in the SPA, 2015 – 2026) (Chart: Darnaway and Leth­en SPA — Min­im­um num­ber of lekking males in the SPA, 2015 – 2026) (Chart: Glen Tanar SPA — Min­im­um num­ber of lekking males in the SPA, 2015 – 2026) (Chart: Kin­veachy SPA — Min­im­um num­ber of lekking males in the SPA, 2015 – 2026) (Chart: Mor­angie SPA — Min­im­um num­ber of lekking males in the SPA, 2015 – 2026) (Chart: Novar SPA — Min­im­um num­ber of lekking males in the SPA, 2015 – 2026)

Con­clu­sion

The increase in the total num­ber of lekking males recor­ded in Scot­land in 2026 was not entirely unex­pec­ted, fol­low­ing favour­able weath­er con­di­tions and the deliv­ery of con­ser­va­tion meas­ures over pre­vi­ous breed­ing sea­sons. Brood data col­lec­ted through a net­work of cam­era traps in recent years, and reli­able sight­ings have also provided encour­aging insights into productivity.

Peri­pher­al pop­u­la­tions do, how­ever, remain in an increas­ingly pre­cari­ous pos­i­tion. There were no signs of caper­cail­lie in Perth­shire or Don­side, and only two cock birds were recor­ded in Moray­shire. The loss of caper­cail­lie from Moray­shire would rep­res­ent a fur­ther con­trac­tion in the spe­cies’ range and increase the vul­ner­ab­il­ity of the Scot­tish pop­u­la­tion over­all. In addi­tion, the Deeside pop­u­la­tion appears to be declin­ing or, at best, remain­ing static.

The RSPB Caper­cail­lie Advis­ory Officer wishes to thank all the lek coun­ters, volun­teers, land man­agers, the Park Author­ity and NatureScot for their assist­ance under­tak­ing lek counts and provid­ing the data for this report.