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Black grouse
Lyrurus tetrix | Korhoen | Gallo lira común
Few spectacles in Europe match a Black Grouse lek on an early spring morning. In the Netherlands that theatre has almost gone: only the Sallandse Heuvelrug still holds a small population.
Voice
Displaying males keep up a continuous bubbling coo, a far-carrying rookoo-rookoo-roo, broken by an explosive hissing choo-weesh. On still mornings the sound carries for kilometres and is given mainly between mid March and late May, from first light until well after sunrise.
Recording: Carl Steinbeißer — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons
Identification
The male is glossy blue-black with a lyre-shaped tail, white undertail coverts and a swollen scarlet wattle; in flight a broad white wing bar flashes. The greyhen is grey-brown with dense dark barring and a slightly forked tail. Both sexes have feathered legs and a stocky, short-necked outline.
Confusion species
The greyhen is most often confused with a female Capercaillie or, further south, a hen Pheasant. Size, the forked tail and the white wing bar separate her from the much larger Capercaillie; from a Pheasant she differs in the short tail and the finer, colder barring.
Habitat
Transitional ground between open and closed landscape: dry and damp heath with scattered birch and pine, bog edges, young plantations and the birch zone above the mountain treeline. Chicks need an insect-rich herb layer, while adults switch to birch catkins and needles through the winter.
Range and movements
From the Alps and the British uplands north through Scandinavia and Russia, with fragmented relict populations in central Europe. In the Netherlands only the Sallandse Heuvelrug remains, propped up with birds brought from Sweden. In Spain the species occurs solely in the Pyrenees of Catalonia and Aragón.
- Resident
- Breeding (summer)
- Winter
- Passage
- Migration direction
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
Where and when to look
Come in April on a windless morning, well before sunrise, and stay at a viewpoint or on the road; on the Sallandse Heuvelrug access is strictly limited anyway. Listen first and scope afterwards, because the bubbling gives away the lek long before the eye finds it.
Conservation status
In the Netherlands the species stands at the edge of extinction after a collapse driven by nitrogen deposition, grass encroachment, drying, fragmentation and heavy predation pressure; only intensive management and translocation keep it going. Germany, Belgium and the Alps show the same decline, while Scandinavian and Russian populations remain large.