Country diary: These red grouse seem ill-suited for foraging in trees | Phil Gates

Wear bank, Wolsingham, Weardale: Portly among the slender branches, they are going to great effort for some wrinkled and wind-dried hawthorn berriesFour red grouse, perched in the bare branches of an old hawthorn, feathers ruffled by a bitterly cold wind. For most of the year they are furtive ground dwellers whose heads pop up among the heather when they see me coming, hunker down, scurry away, and then, if I get too close, explode into the air with a whirr of wings, scolding: "Go back! Go back!"These birds seem ridiculously ill-suited to arboreal foraging, but the lure of the last hawthorn berries must have been strong. They are struggling, too portly to reach berries in the dense central tangle of thorny branches, too heavy to reach those on the slender tips of the twigs that bend under their weight. They flap their wings in frantic struggles to retain balance. Continue reading...