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Blackgame numbers were up to 1,437 in 2014,
however the bird remains vulnerable
A
s we came over the brow
of the hill, a covey of 10
black grouse got up per-
fectly on cue; within a
couple of hours we saw
18 blackcock and three
grey hens. “I didn’t want to guarantee it, so
that was very pleasing,” said Neville Gill,
owner and manager of 1,050-acre Wil-
liamston estate in Northumberland. Once
widespread in England, black grouse could
be found on lowland heath as far south as
Hampshire. However, by 1998 there were
only 773 displaying males left. These days
they are confined to the uplands, where
96% of the remaining English population
live on the edges of moors keepered for red
grouse. So why has this red-listed species
held on at Williamston?
Black grouse use a range of habitats pro-
vided by moorland fringe, including rough
grazing and hay meadows on the slopes and
heather and blanket bog on the hill.
Williamston has been in Gill’s family for
300 years and records of its 750 acres of
moor being managed for grouse date from
the 1850s to the present day. Since then,
there have been many changes in uplands
policy. After the war, the family’s interest
in grouse shooting meant it resisted incen-
tives to cover the hill in conifer plantations
that would have been unsuitable for black
grouse. In the late 1940s, drainage ‘grips’
were dug to drain the moor to increase sheep
production. Over the past 15 years, 13.6km of
ditches on the estate have been filled, rewet-
ting the blanket bog to benefit sphagnum
moss and other peat-forming plants.
SHEEP RESTRICTED
Similarly, Gill reduced the number of sheep
from 500 to 230 and keeps them off the hill in
winter to allow the moor to recover from over
grazing. Grazing restrictions allow vegetation
to grow, providing more refuge from preda-
tors, a wider range of plants for adult black
grouse to eat and more insects for chicks.
As well as the move to light-touch agri-
culture, for the past 30 years Gill has used a
variety of techniques to regenerate moorland
plants, including spraying off large areas of
encroaching bracken before fencing and
reseeding as well as cutting and burning old
rank heather. Burning results in faster regen-
eration of the key plant species than cutting,
with heather and bilberry showing signs of
regrowth by July the same year.
The ‘cool burns’ only consume the heather
canopy, leaving the peat untouched and
they also reduce wildfire risk by creating