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
Grouse ptarmigans Genus "Tetrao" – black grouse Genus "Tetrastes" Genus "Bonasa" Genus "Centrocercus" – sage grouse Genus "Tympanuchus" – prairie grouse Grouse Grouse are a group of birds from the order Galliformes, in the family Phasianidae. Grouse are frequently assigned to the subfamily Tetraoninae (sometimes Tetraonidae), a classification supported by mitochondrial DNA sequence studies, and applied by the American Ornithologists' Union, ITIS, and others. Grouse inhabit temperate and subarctic regions of the Northern Hemisphere, from pine forests to moorland and mountainside, from 83°N (rock ptarmigan in northern Greenland) to 28°N (Attwater's prairie chicken in Texas). Grouse are heavily built like other