- the male of the Black Grouse Tetrao tetrix. The numbers of these fine birds with their dramatic courtship display are declining. A reason for the decline may be suggested by that fact that if you make a black cock of someone, you shoot them. This is illustrated in the account of Archibald Stewart's trial 1753:
He would make black cocks of them, before they entered into possession, by which the deponent understood shooting them
and in Sir Walter Scott's Waverley (1814):
And I hae heard mae than ane say they wadna tak muckle to mak a black-cock o' ye.