SPORTING ANSWERS
A tale of Islay’s lost grouse
GAMEBIRDS
Q I have recollections of seeing my first black grouse on the island of Islay in 1970, but on a recent visit to the island I was told that they have long been extinct there. My informant wasn’t even sure that they had ever existed on the island, so perhaps my memory is playing tricks on me. What is the truth?
A I definitely saw black grouse on Islay in both the 1970s and 1980s, so can confirm that there used to be a small but healthy population on the island. Birds were still present when fieldwork was undertaken for the British Trust for Ornithology’s winter atlas, which covered the three winters of 1981-82, 1982-83 and 1983-84, and again for the New Atlas of Breeding Birds: 1988-91, though this also showed a decline and the surviving birds were restricted to the west of the island.
The Bird Atlas 2007-11 included no records of black grouse from the island. It states “a local extinction on Islay is particularly notable”. Islay was the last of the offshore islands of the British Isles where black grouse could be found.
This fast-declining species is now only to be found on mainland Britain. There is no historical evidence that this bird was ever in Ireland. DT
