{"id":21000,"date":"2022-11-16T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2022-11-15T23:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbccountryfile\/?post_type=purple_issue&p=21000"},"modified":"2022-11-21T10:15:21","modified_gmt":"2022-11-21T09:15:21","slug":"of-partridges-pear-trees","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbccountryfile\/2022\/11\/16\/of-partridges-pear-trees\/","title":{"rendered":"Of partridges & pear trees"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

As that ever-popular Christmas song rings out in village squares and churches across the UK, our partridge population continues its steady decline. Patrick <\/strong>Galbraith <\/strong>finds out why this once-common farmland bird is increasingly rare <\/p>\n\n

\"\"
Lyrics to \u2018The 12 Days of Christmas\u2019 were published in English in 1780, and many composers wrote tunes for them. The melody we are familiar with today was arranged in 1909 by Frederic Austin <\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n

The sun is fast falling away towards the fields, turning the water in the tractor ruts golden, and somewhere up ahead, in a strip of mustard crop, a cock bird is calling. \u201cIt\u2019s just this time of year, in the last few days before Christmas,\u201d says retired gamekeeper Gerald Gray, as though telling me a secret, \u201cwhen grey partridges might start pairing up. Particularly if there\u2019s a bit of weather on the way.\u201d <\/p>\n\n

We\u2019re in the middle of the Hilborough Estate in Norfolk, where a healthy population of grey partridges is holding on. There are no signs, but you know you have arrived at Hilborough because there are rough margins round the edge of every field and dense hedges sprawl almost three metres wide. It\u2019s farming as it once was and it\u2019s everything grey partridges need to thrive. <\/p>\n\n

\u201cThere they go,\u201d Gerald says quietly as we get to the end of the mustard. I try to count them but they are too fast, and then they\u2019re gone, curling away over the knapped flint wall. <\/p>\n\n

Every December, school concerts ring out with that merry melody \u2018The Twelve Days of Christmas\u2019. The first verse puts a partridge squarely in a pear tree (see page 36), but the song\u2019s ornithological rigour is a little lacking. If you were to spot a grey partridge in a pear tree, you would be looking at an oddity. Partridges tend to be found under hedges, in hay meadows, scratching around field margins and running across stubble. <\/p>\n\n

As I watched that covey \u2013 meaning a small group of gamebirds, from the French word coove, <\/em>\u2018a hatching\u2019 \u2013 disappearing into the autumn light, I was reminded why people talk about \u201cthe flash of silver\u201d. The plumage on their backs is a sort of smudgy brown and when grey partridges burst into the air, they blend into their habitat well, but the feathers on their chest are chalky grey, which creates an effect like a flash of silver when the birds are on the wing in the sun.<\/p>\n\n

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Male partridges can aggressively vie for dominance as the covey breaks up and the birds begin to form pairs in January <\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n
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Partridges are ground-hugging and don\u2019t move far from where they hatched, only taking to the wing when startled or threatened <\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n

Partridges, on the ground, are often described as dumpy, but I don\u2019t see it, really. There is something charming about the way they run with their little legs, and males are fierce. There are few more enthralling sights than partridge cocks chasing each other then rolling around in clouds of dust and feathers in order to establish dominance. <\/p>\n\n

Francis Buner, a Swiss ornithologist who leads on grey partridges at the Game and Wildlife Conservation Trust, thinks it\u2019s amusing that people in Britain call grey partridges \u2018English\u2019 partridges. They are native to Britain but also to Eastern Europe. Perhaps people in Britain like to imagine we have the same qualities as grey partridges. As monogamous birds, they are very loyal, and there are few braver creatures than a cock grey defending its nest. Cocks also display admirable single-mindedness when displaying to females. They stand tall, puff their chests out and flick their tails up and down. They are sometimes so preoccupied with looking handsome that they are plucked off the ground by raptors. I wonder if it\u2019s this sort of chivalry that makes Brits determined to claim them.<\/p>\n\n

The partridge\u2019s scratchy \u201ckut-kutkutting\u201d call was once a common sound across the UK, but in the past few decades the population has declined by 65% to just 35,000 pairs. Last summer, while I was writing my book In <\/em>Search <\/em>of <\/em>One <\/em>Last <\/em>Song, <\/em>I went for a wander around Sussex with Francis. \u201cThere were so many of them,\u201d he told me, \u201cthat you have no imagination how many millions there were. It was the most common farmland bird.\u201d<\/p>\n\n

The causes of their decline are many. Insecticides have destroyed an essential food source \u2013 particularly for chicks \u2013 and hedges, which are vital habitat, have been ripped up to enlarge fields. The transition to winter cropping has also been catastrophic; fields are now often ploughed up and drilled after harvest rather than being left until spring. Grey partridge food, both grain and weed seeds, is abundant among winter stubble, but on cultivated ground there is little for them. Put simply, as farming has become more efficient, life has become hard for England\u2019s greys. <\/p>\n\n

<\/div>
\n

LIFE CYCLE OF A GREY PARTRIDGE <\/h4>\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

The hen lays a clutch of around 15 eggs \u2013 one of the most prolific layers of all British birds. Losses are typical. Nests tend to be found in grassy margins, hedge bottoms and rough corners. For the first three weeks of their life, partridge chicks survive on protein-rich insects, so insecticides are bad news for them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s said that hen birds lay in Royal Ascot week, in the middle of June. If it rained at Ascot, rural people would say, \u201cit\u2019ll be a bad year for greys\u201d. Both parents tend the young and the male is plucky. Cock birds have been recorded flying at weasels and stoats, while hens will feign a broken wing in order to draw away predators. <\/p>\n<\/div><\/section>\n\n

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The grey partridge can be identified by its distinctive rasping call and orange head, and the male has a chestnut-coloured horseshoe mark in the middle of his chest <\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n
RED-LEGGED INVASION <\/strong><\/h5>\n\n

Part of the reason greys are called English is to differentiate them from the ubiquitous red-legged partridge. It\u2019s believed the red-legged was first imported by King Charles II in the 1600s, as he liked to hunt them for the table. But it\u2019s said that greys taste better. Tim Maddams, the former head chef at River Cottage, tells me that for his money, grey partridge is the sweetest game meat going. Mrs Beeton, the Victorian food writer, included an array of partridge recipes, which would have been made with greys, in her 1861 book Mrs <\/em>Beeton\u2019s <\/em>Household <\/em>Management. <\/em>The most intriguing is potted partridge, which consists of slow-cooking birds in spiced butter then shredding the meat, to be spread on toast. Interestingly, Mrs Beeton describes grey partridges as \u201ctimorous birds, being easily taken\u201d. Most gamekeepers, however, would disagree. A lot of the grey partridge\u2019s prestige as quarry was because of the way coveys \u2018starburst\u2019 every which way when they see the guns.<\/p>\n\n

SURVIVAL STRATEGY <\/strong><\/h5>\n\n

When gamekeeper Gerald Gray was a little boy, he remembers red-leggeds, which breed well in captivity, starting to be released in large numbers. In fact, it was something his grandfather \u2013 akeeper too and a great traditionalist \u2013 thought totally wrong.<\/p>\n\n

Inevitably, there were years when greys didn\u2019t breed successfully, often due to bad weather, which meant estates didn\u2019t shoot in order to avoid wiping out breeding stock. But, clearly, no such delayed gratification is necessary when you are simply putting red-legged partridges down. Vast numbers can be released to allow shooting to go ahead every season, but the eventual consequence is that fragile populations of greys are shot out \u2013 mere collateral among large bags of French birds.<\/p>\n\n

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Red-legged partridges were introduced to England from France as a new gamebird in the 1700s and were found to breed easily in captivity<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n
\"\"
Highly sociable, partridges form monogamous pair bonds for life, and after breeding create coveys of up to 15 birds <\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n

Ironically, though, in some places, shooting is also the very reason that greys are still scratching around at all. In the spring of 2021, I drove to Gloucestershire to count greys with Frank Snudden, a young keeper and passionate conservationist. Every year, for a week in spring, Frank heads out every day at dawn to count pairs on 688 hectares. In just seven years, through habitat management, sensitive farming and predator control, Frank has managed to increase partridge pairs on his patch from 16 to over 100. The key, he explained, as we sat there in the fog, is being able to tell landowners that they aren\u2019t going to be able to shoot if birds haven\u2019t bred well. An old-fashioned keeper\u2019s priority was to protect his birds at all costs.<\/p>\n\n

On paper, it\u2019s simple \u2013 we need to release fewer red-leggeds, we need to create more habitat and we need to keep predators in check. But in reality, saving greys is a puzzle that requires a lot of time, a lot of money and a lot of dogged passion. <\/p>\n\n

\n\n

A PARTRIDGE \u2013 IN A PEAR TREE ? <\/h4>\n\n
\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n

If you see a partridge in a pear tree, make sure you take a photo \u2013 partridges are famously floor-dwelling. In Greek mythology, Daedalus the architect throws his nephew, Perdix, off a cliff. The goddess, Athena, magics Perdix into a partridge, hence the bird\u2019s latin name Perdix perdix. <\/em>Ever after that, nephew-bird is terrified of heights and lives on the floor. <\/p>\n\n

Nonetheless, the first verse of that Christmas classic \u2018The Twelve Days of Christmas\u2019, sets the partridge firmly in a pear tree. It might simply be that an older version included both the French and English for the species, \u201ca partridge, un perdrix\u201d, and that over time \u2018un perdrix\u2019 became corrupted into \u2018in a pear tree\u2019. <\/p>\n\n

In a darker vein, it has been suggested that the song was a Catholic catechism from the 16th century, a period when possessing Catholic literature in England could lead to imprisonment. The partridge might represent Christ, nailed to the cross. <\/p>\n\n

\n\n
\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n

Patrick Galbraith is editor of The Shooting Times. <\/p>\n\n

His first book, In Search of One Last Song: Britain\u2019s Disappearing Birds and the People Trying to Save Them<\/em> (Harper Collins) is out now.<\/p>\n\n

<\/div>\n\n
<\/div>
\n

FIELD GUIDE <\/h4>\n\n\n\n
\n
\n
\"\"
Red-legged partridge
Alectoris rufa<\/em><\/strong><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
\n
\"\"
Grey partridge
Perdix perdix<\/em><\/strong><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

Grey partridge cock birds can be identified by the chestnut marking in the middle of their breast. The male often stands, while the hen \u2013 they pair for life \u2013 hunkers down next to him. The slightly larger red-legged has pinker legs than the grey\u2019s. One of the easiest ways to confirm you have seen a grey is the scratchy, cheeping call it makes on the wing. They weigh about the same as a wood pigeon, but their wings are shorter. <\/p>\n<\/div><\/section>\n\n

Photos: Alamy, Naturepl.com, RSPB Images<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As that ever-popular Christmas song rings out in village squares and churches across the UK, our partridge population continues its steady decline. 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