The Black Grouse or Blackgame (Tetrao tetrix) is a large game bird in the grouse family. It is a sedentary species, breeding across northern Eurasia in moorland and bog areas near to woodland, mostly boreal. The Black Grouse is closely related to the Caucasian Grouse.
Black Grouse is a large bird with males being around 53 centimetres (21 in) long and weighing 1,000–1,450 grams (2.2–3.2 lb) and females approximately 40 centimetres (16 in) and weighing 750–1,110 grams (1.7–2.4 lb). The cock is very distinctive, with black plumage, apart from red wattles and a white wingbar, and a lyre-shaped tail, which appears forked in flight. His song is loud, bubbling and somewhat dove-like.
The female is greyish-brown and has a cackling call. She takes all responsibility for nesting and caring for the chicks, as is typical with gamebirds.
Read more about Black Grouse: Reproduction and Distribution, Status, Relationship To Humans, Etymology
Famous quotes containing the words black and/or grouse:
“For all of him dead and
gone and vanished from us, and all of him which
clings to our speech black god of our time.”
—Imamu Amiri Baraka (b. 1934)
“I can grouse about the food, and the C.O. and anything I blame please. And that’s more than you with your Gestapo and your storm troopers and your Aryan bourgeois. Ahhh, nuts. What’s the good of talking to you. You can’t even begin to understand democracy. We own the right to be fed up with anything we damn please and say so out loud when we feel like it.”
—Emeric Pressburger (1902–1988)