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
Driven grouse shooting a subspecies of the willow grouse, but is sometimes considered to be a separate species "Lagopus scoticus". It is also known as the moorfowl or moorbird. The grouse can fly at up to . Heather moorland is rarer than tropical rainforest, and 75% of it is found in the UK as a result of grouse management, which provides an incentive to conserve heather moorland despite economic pressures of subsidies to intensify forestry and farming operations. 60% of all England's upland Sites of Special Scientific Interest are managed for grouse shooting. To support a large population of grouse, gamekeepers employ heather