The red grouse is a bird of the open moor, low and fast on the wing, and this piece catches it at full stretch - wings at their widest, primaries spread and caught in the wind, the whole body driving forward. Modelled life-size, the pose is held at the point of greatest wingspan, so the sculpture reads as a single instant of flight. The reddish patina, applied by hand, settles into the barring of the feathers and picks out the detail of each wing.

The technical problem with a bird in flight is weight: all of it has to travel down through a single point of contact. Here the mass carries through a small branch, which meets a fabricated bronze base, so the grouse sits well clear of the ground with nothing to interrupt the line of the wings. It is cast in bronze in a limited edition of twelve, each with a hand-applied patina, signed by the artist and supplied with a certificate of authenticity.