ON THE WILD SIDE THE ANGRY BIRDS
PROVIDED you’re not snowed in, you should see the first bumblebees waking from their winter nap. Bumblebees are in serious decline, so give our little friends a bit of love.
It is easy to say the capercaillie is black, but look closer at the imposing turkey-sized male and you will see he is black, grey, white, green and rusty, with bright red skin above his eye and a sometimes a very yellow beak.
The female is a more grouse-like mottled brown, with a streaky orange chest. She can be nearly half his size. That big difference in size and colour is among the most impressive examples of “sexual dimorphism” in the bird world.
Males weigh in at around 5kg, but the heaviest-ever was in captivity and weighed in at more than 7kg. Their name is a mutation of a Gaelic phrase, but no-one is sure if it means cock of the woods or horse of the woods. I know which seems more likely! Ancient capercaillie bones have been found all over Scotland and Ireland, but they went extinct in the 1760s due to habitat loss and overhunting.
Despite being a popular game bird elsewhere, it has never been legally classified as one in the UK as the Game Act of 1831 came after its extinction. Swedish birds were brought to Taymouth in the late 1930s to replace the now-extinct Scottish subspecies. They thrived in conifer plantations until the 1970s, reaching a
LET’S meet a huge species you will only see in the pinewoods and conifer plantations of the Scottish Highlands.
This mighty grouse could be described as one of our unluckiest birds as it’s on the brink of extinction here for a second time. Follow me as I introduce the strange, ungainly and often aggressive capercaillie. respectable 2,000 birds. But the population has since plummeted so fast they could go extinct again. Numbers have halved and they are under threat from habitat destruction, predation by foxes and pine martens, and deer eating their favourite bilberries. Even fences built to keep deer out of conifer plantations are a threat as the birds break their necks when they fly into them.
When the bilberries aren’t in season they snack on pine shoots and needles. It’s said to give their meat a turpentine aftertaste and means they need two appendixes and must eat stones to help grind up their tough food.
Maybe that’s why capercaillies seem so angry and have been known to attack people, dogs, eagles and even cars during the breeding season when they congregate at display sites known as leks. They aren’t the smartest birds!