Of all avian losses in my lifetime, none grieves me more than the going of black grouse from the north Derbyshire moors. And my local story only hints at the wider collapse that has, in 40 years, wiped out the species from Dartmoor to Durham, except in one enclave in north Wales. How strange to think that the record bag – 252 shot on one day in 1860 – was achieved at Staffordshire’s Cannock Chase.
But let’s focus on the joy of them. Because, of all Britain’s breeding birds, black grouse put on the most captivating spectacle. Males gather at display grounds called leks, like the one at this RSPB reserve, where dominant birds strut, joust and parry while producing the most unearthly sound.
It comprises three parts: a constant, wobbly bubbling note, which is known as “roocooing” and created via inflated air sacs in those shimmering blue-black necks. This is punctuated by a gurgling sound and then, and most dramatically, by a sharp, aspirated tchu-warrr that resembles a blade drawn over stone.
Occasionally, if females wander through the lek, the male threats boil into testosterone-charged fights. They flail at rivals with feet and beak, aiming especially for the crimson wattles on the crown, which, in the heat of conflict, are tumescent with blood. The dandified postures and plumage of the males – the lustrous, long, lyrate tail feathers, the bushed-up white bustle and the black-and-white arc of outspread wings – look like impediments to the naked violence.
Yet with grouse display almost everything is show. It invariably ends in bathos. The combatants shrink like deflated balloons. They exchange murderous intent for pecking at grass. Or they run off, victor after vanquished, like some comedic clockwork toys.
What you are left with after an hour or so of this glamorous pantomime, as the dawn sun rises over the far Monadhliath mountains, as the cuckoos call spring and the willow warblers bathe you in their rain song – what you’re left with when you hear that the grouse population here has nearly quadrupled and things are looking good across the whole area – is a sense of the importance of the whole business of nature conservation.
