Red grouse by sheep. Conservation measures taken on foot of the judgment have seen the population in the area double from 400 to 800. The red grouse is considered a game bird and is shot in large numbers during the shooting season which traditionally starts on August 12, known as the Glorious Twelfth. There is a keen competition among some London restaurants to serve freshly killed grouse on August 12, with the birds being flown from the moors and cooked within hours. Shooting can take the form of 'walked up' (where shooters walk across the moor to flush grouse and take a
Spruce grouse the way ruffed grouse do. In the first half of the century, spruce grouse were classified as two separate species in the genus "Canachites": spruce grouse ("C. canadensis") and Franklin's grouse ("C. franklinii"), a position reinstated by Birdlife International in 2014. Then the species were unified and moved to the genus "Dendragapus", congeneric with the blue grouse with which spruce grouse often share coniferous habitats. However, spruce grouse do not have inflatable cervical sacs as in blue grouse, and the natal plumage of the two species is different. Based on its stronger resemblance to the Siberian grouse ("Falcipennis falcipennis"), the