Home bird in need of protection

THE red grouse, a relative of the pheasant and the farmyard hen, lives in bogs, where it feeds on the shoots of young heather.

Its status in Ireland has been much debated; is it to be regarded as a distinct sub-species or not? Arriving here at the end of the last ice age, it’s had plenty of time to develop ‘Irish solutions to Irish problems’. British grouse hate travelling.

Ninety-four percent of males in a Scottish study never ventured more than 1.5km from home-sweet-home and the greatest distance covered was 8km. Females were more adventurous; 79% stayed within 1.5km and one individual travelled 42km. Apart from the occasional batch of foreign birds released to improve local hunting stock, grouse here have been on their own for millennia.