- woodgrouse Tetrao urogallus. Whether you pronounce the first syllable as cap or cape is up to you, but what you must not do is pronounce that z. It represents an old letter known as yogh which was pronounced like the first sound in yes, but in many cases it has now become silent. It is usually silent in capercailzie. The letter was originally written like an old-fashioned handwritten z and this is why printers used that letter shape for it, giving rise to all manner of confusion. Now we have the surname Menzies pronounced in two different ways. Older occasional spellings such as Mackenyie reveal that Mackenzie has changed its pronunciation. Another surname to watch out for is Dalziel.
Not only does the capercailzie have an interesting spelling, it also has an interesting derivation. It comes from the Gaelic capull coille meaning 'horse of the wood'. This is a reference to its considerable size. The male measures 33 inches and the female 25 inches.
John Leslie's 1596 translation of Dalrymple's Historie of Scotland explains:
A certane foul and verie rare called the capercalze to name with the vulgar peple, the horse of the forrest.
We read that, in 1746, Caperkellies are frequently sold in mercat, according to Kington Oliphant in The Jacobite Lairds of Gask (published in 1870), but by 1760, Robert Pococke notes in Tours in Scotland:
In the Mountain towards Fort Augustus they have found the Caper Keily (Cock of the Wood). They are now very rare. I saw the skin of one stuffed, they are about the size of a Turkey, the head like a Grouse or Moor Fowl, entirely black, except that the Belly is spotted with White, and it is white under the Wings.
Soon after, the 1795 Statistical Account for Inverness suggests that the species has become extinct in Scotland:
The caper coille, or wild turkey, was seen in Glenmoriston, and in the neighbouring district of Strathglass, about 40 years ago, and it is not known that this bird has appeared since, or that it now exists in Britain.
It was reintroduced from Sweden in the late 1830s and Archibald Rea asserts in The Divot Dyke (1898), the cock bird's distinctive voice was to be heard once again in the Scottish highlands:
The capercailzie up the glen
Was churkin' loodly to his hen.
This quotation does not quite do justice to the call which starts as a rattle and then sounds disconcertingly like the popping of a cork and pouring of liquid, ending with a harsh grinding noise.