Grouse

Grouse, on the British and Irish table, means the red grouse (Lagopus lagopus scotica), a small, heather-feeding moorland game bird whose dark, dense, deeply flavoured flesh is the most prized — and most expensive — wild bird of the autumn shoot. Its taste is the strongest and most distinctly heathery and bitter-sweet of the common game birds, and the season's opening on the "Glorious Twelfth" of August is a fixture of the British sporting calendar.