ONE of the region's most endangered birds may be on the brink of a startling recovery, following a successful rescue mission.

Black grouse, famous for their spectacular early morning displays in the spring, were once commonplace throughout England, but in recent years numbers have dropped alarmingly.

The birds disappeared from southern England during the middle of the 1900s and have since vanished from counties including Staffordshire and Derbyshire.

By the early 1990s, there were just 650 males left in England, a scattering in the Yorkshire Dales but mostly in the North Pennines.

Several years ago, a rescue operation was launched in the Durham and Northumberland hills by the Game Conservancy Trust, the Royal Sociaty for the Protection of Birds, Northumbrian Water and English Nature, backed by the Ministry of Defence, on whose land some of them were breeding.

One of the key aims of the programme has been to reduce overgrazing by sheep, which had robbed the grouse of the ground cover on the fringe of heather moorland which it needs to survive.

Other initiatives have attempted to reverse the loss of woodland, which is also important to the birds, and to reduce the number of foxes, stoats and weasels preying on chicks.

The number of males has risen above 800 and hopes are high that the bird's fortunes are recovering.

John Barrett, English Nature's deputy team manager in Northumbria, said: "We hope that next year's national census will show an upturn in the fortunes of the black grouse and that the long-term downward trend in the population will have been reversed."