Nature · Birds

Black grouse

Resident · 45–60 cm

Lyrurus tetrix — Phasianidae (pheasants and grouse)

A moorland-edge grouse famous for its communal lek, where glossy blue-black males gather before dawn to bubble, wheeze and spar with tails fanned into a white-fringed lyre. Numbers have fallen with the loss of the rough, damp, herb-rich ground between moor and wood, and it is now Red-listed while still being a legal quarry species. The male is the blackcock, the female the greyhen.

How to spot them

▸Lek at dawn: males in a ring, tails fanned to flash a brilliant white undertail, red wattles above the eye
▸A far-carrying bubbling, dove-like 'rookooing' song, punctuated by an explosive sneezing wheeze
▸Male's tail is lyre-shaped, curling outwards; the capercaillie's is a broad vertical fan
▸Bold white wingbar in flight, in both sexes — red grouse shows no white at all
▸Greyhen is greyer and more finely barred than a red grouse, with a notched tail and a pale wingbar

How to know it

Males gather before dawn in a ring on short turf, fan lyre-shaped tails to flash white, and bubble and wheeze at one another

The black grouse lek; the male is the blackcock, the female the greyhen.

A dove-like bubbling 'rookoo' carrying across a moor at first light, broken by an explosive sneezing wheeze

The blackcock's lek song.

Bird of the rough ground between heather moor and woodland; the male's outward-curling tail gave the shape its name in fly-fishing and dress

Black grouse — the lyre tail also names the 'lyrebird' style of feather ornament.

Red-listed in the UK yet still a legal quarry species, with an open season from 20 August

Black grouse — not on Schedule 1, unlike most of Britain's rare birds.

Extinct in southern England since the 1980s; recovery projects in the North Pennines and north Wales have reversed local declines

Black grouse — the North Pennines Black Grouse Recovery Project began in 1996.

Counted as lekking males, about 4,850 of them at the last UK estimate

Black grouse — BTO BirdFacts, 2016 estimate.

Quick-fire facts

•Scientific name Lyrurus tetrix; Lyrurus means 'lyre-tail', for the male's outward-curling tail feathers
•The male is called the blackcock and the female the greyhen — the blackcock's tail gives the 'lyre' shape
•BTO BirdFacts gives about 4,850 lekking males in the UK (2016 estimate); it is counted in males at leks, not pairs
•Red-listed in Birds of Conservation Concern 5 (2021), yet it is not on Schedule 1 and remains a quarry species with an open season
•Forest maturation — plantations growing too dense and dark — accounts for much of the Scottish decline, alongside overgrazing and deer-fence collisions
•Lost from south-west England by the 1980s; the UK range shrank by about 29% between the 1968–72 and 2008–11 atlases
•A 'rogue' blackcock displaying to anything that moves is a well-known phenomenon at leks
•The classic confusion is not the blackcock but the greyhen, told from a red grouse by its greyer barring, notched tail and pale wingbar
•Strongholds are the North Pennines, the Scottish Highlands and a remnant in north-east Wales around Ruabon and Llandegla

Drill it — 7 cards

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Sources

British Trust for Ornithology — BirdFacts: Black Grouse
British Trust for Ornithology — Birds of Conservation Concern