A breeding population of black grouse has successfully fledged chicks, nearly 200 years since the bubbling of one of the UK’s rarest birds was heard on the North York Moors.
Before this summer there had been no reliable records of successful black grouse breeding on the moors since the 1840s. In a project to return the ground-nesting bird to the moors, ten males and ten females were moved under licence from the North Pennines, their last remaining stronghold in England.
By the end of the summer breeding season four females had fledged 12 chicks.
One of the successfully hatched nests on the North York Moors
GWCT
Phil Warren, a project leader from the Game and Wildlife Conservation Trust (GWCT), said: “I am surprised you didn’t hear me shout in London when I came across the first chicks.
“The hens are sensitive to disturbance so we left them alone for six weeks. The first bird we came back to in early August had four chicks and it was just ‘Wow’.”
The Black Grouse Range Expansion Project is led by researchers from the GWCT uplands team and funded by £164,000 from Natural England’s Species Recovery Programme, £30,000 from the British Association for Shooting and Conservation (BASC) wildlife fund and donations from members and the public through the GWCT’s black grouse appeal.
Work carried out included removing conifer woodland and restoring the ground to bog, heath and scrub woodland. Moorland grasslands have been managed more extensively to control bracken and restore bilberry and heather.
The 20 birds were caught by researchers at night-time roosts and immediately transported to the release site two hours’ drive away.
Eight males and eight females were fitted with radio tags and followed through the breeding season to assess movements, survival and breeding behaviour.
The seven males still present in the spring established leks in and around the area where they had been released, where they displayed to attract females and encourage them to mate.
All of the seven females still around in the spring nested. Five nests hatched and two were abandoned. Four of the five females which hatched chicks fledged broods of one, two, four and five chicks.
Warren said the next phase is to bolster the initial release with another 20 birds this autumn to help establish a self-sustaining population in the North York Moors.
Black grouse favour a mosaic of moorland habitats and marginal farmland that are near to woodland. The birds initially benefited from the planting of commercial forestry plantations after the Second World War, but as these plantations matured they became unsuitable for the species. Habitat loss and overgrazing have resulted in a decline in numbers and range.
The male grouse established leks in the spring
Warren said that although black grouse are on the quarry list, gamekeepers and shoot owners across the UK have observed a voluntary moratorium on shooting them since the 1990s, in light of their conservation status.
Black grouse are a red list species of high conservation concern. Once present in every county in England, they are now largely restricted to the North Pennines, which includes parts of Co Durham, Northumberland, Cumbria and North Yorkshire.
There has been a fairly stable population of about 1,000 to 2,000 displaying males over the past 25 years, and about 80 per cent of them are in the North Pennines.
It is hoped the climate in the North York Moors, which is drier and warmer than that in the Pennines in June, when chicks hatch, will help the birds to continue to breed successfully and re-establish populations.
Natural re-colonisation of black grouse to the North York Moors from the existing populations in the North Pennines is limited by the 19-mile gap across unsuitable lowland farmland habitats in the Vale of Mowbray.
“Hopefully the sound of black grouse bubbling in the spring will be commonplace across the North York Moors in the near future,” Warren said.