Red Grouse now recognized as a distinct species

Until now Red Grouse, found only in the uplands of Great Britain and Ireland, was considered a subspecies of Willow Ptarmigan, which has a broad circum-boreal distribution but is absent from Britain and Ireland. The International Ornithological Committee (IOC) has announced that it will recognise the split of Red Grouse and Willow Ptarmigan, with Red Grouse now to become a British and Irish endemic species. The authors of a 2022 paper , published in British Birds, stated that by combining modern taxonomic approaches with recent molecular data, including genome-wide analyses, they demonstrated that there are good reasons to treat Red Grouse as a full species. Red Grouse are found on Bridestones Moor. It is highly resident, moving only in extreme conditions, and is closely associated with heather moorland where, in England particularly, it provides the basis for the controversial ‘sport' of driven grouse shooting.