Scientific name: Tetrao urogallus Linnaeus, 1758
Bird group: Game birds
Field characters. 60-87 cm. A huge grouse with broad wings and rounded tail. Male dark slate-grey with warm brown upper mantle and wing-coverts, and glossy green-black chest; whitish patches on shoulders, belly, upper and under tail-coverts, and along flanks. Bright red patch above eye; legs feathered, bill horn-coloured. Female resembles female Red Grouse or Black Grouse but differs in larger size, rounded tail, chestnut patch on chest, bolder black barring above and black and white barring below; bill grey. In flight both sexes lack white wing-bar. Juvenile like adult female but smaller and duller.
Voice. Distinctive song of male starts with a calm, rhythmic "tick-up, tick-up, tick-up" and ends with a sudden "pop" (like the drawing of a cork), followed by a series of hissing, scraping and whispering notes. Female produces a loud and harsh "kock-kock".
Distribution. Marked decline in central Europe due to habitat destruction, but still fairly common in northern Europe.
Habitat. Mainly a bird of montane coniferous forest with dense undergrowth but occurs also in mixed woods and taiga.
Food. Almost exclusively plants; feeds on ground in spring, summer and autumn, in crowns of trees in winter. In winter, feeds mainly on needles, shoots, and cones of Scots and Cembra pine, Juniper, Douglas fir, and Norway and Sitka spruce. During summer, feeds on leaves, stems and berries of bilberry, crowberry, cow-wheat, cloudberry, sedges, and horsetails.