Black-billed Capercaillie

How to identify

Field marks

1. Bill black, giving the species its name
2. Male has a glossy blue-black head and neck and a metallic blue-green breast
3. White spots on the tail coverts, wing coverts and flanks
4. Male raises and fans its broad black tail during display

Male, female and young

Female has a creamy-white throat with fine black spots and rusty upperparts with brown barring; grayer overall than female Western Capercaillie.

Voice

Repeated castanet-like clicks grow progressively faster and can be heard from 1.5 km away.

Similar species

Western Capercaillie

Black-billed Capercaillie is slightly smaller and slimmer, with a longer neck and black bill, while Western Capercaillie has a horn-colored bill.

Where and when it's recorded

Black-billed Capercaillie has been recorded at 3 of the 8,171 birding hotspots we track, in 2 countries and regions.

Records by month Northern Hemisphere

To protect this bird from disturbance, we don't list exact sites.

Countries and regions with the most records

MongoliaChina

eBird records via GBIF up to 2024-12-31. A record means someone listed it; more records partly mean more birders, not more birds.

About

The black-billed capercaillie (Tetrao urogalloides) is a large grouse species closely related to the more widespread western capercaillie. It is a sedentary species that breeds in the larch taiga forests of eastern Siberia as well as parts of northern Mongolia and China.

Excerpt from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0 · authors · Read more on Wikipedia

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