Black Grouse

How to identify

Field marks

1. Male has a black neck and back with a deep blue sheen
2. Male has a white wing stripe and white undertail-coverts
3. Male has red bare skin above the eye
4. Male has long outer tail feathers that curl outwards

Male, female and young

Male mainly black; female gray-brown, with more cryptic plumage.

Voice

Male's courtship song is a low series of bubbling, cooing notes.

Where and when it's recorded

Black Grouse has been recorded at 55 of the 8,171 birding hotspots we track, in 14 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

FinlandRussiaChinaLithuaniaSwedenNorwayÅland IslandsKazakhstan

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 grouse (Lyrurus tetrix), also known as northern black grouse, Eurasian black grouse, blackgame or blackcock, is a large bird in the grouse tribe. It is a sedentary species, spanning across the Palearctic in moorland and steppe habitat when breeding, often near wooded areas. They will spend the winter perched in dense forests, feeding almost exclusively on the needles of conifers.

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

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