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English partridge


TRINITY
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On my daily exercise walk today I saw a pair of English partridge. A very rare site nowadays in the area where I live. On returning home I checked the RSPB website and saw they are now on the red list. The general view suggests their decline is quite serious. If this opinion is accepted, do you think it is a good thing to keep shooting them or give them a break as they seem to need all the help they can get.

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18 minutes ago, TRINITY said:

On my daily exercise walk today I saw a pair of English partridge. A very rare site nowadays in the area where I live. On returning home I checked the RSPB website and saw they are now on the red list. The general view suggests their decline is quite serious. If this opinion is accepted, do you think it is a good thing to keep shooting them or give them a break as they seem to need all the help they can get.


The ones being shot are normally keeper bred and reared birds. These birds don’t do great in the wild. 
 

Wild grey partridge shouldn’t have keepered birds introduced as they can impact on the wild stock. 
 

Wild birds should be supported to breed through good habitat conservation and smashing the predators as much as possible in the area. 
 

The hard part is getting farms who base their farming practices around conservation and shooting. 

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Predators are the main problem four legged for any ground nesting bird and winged. Where this has been sorted greys can still survive in numbers.  In my younger days back in the 1950s greys where the only partridge on the ground and I remember on one of our shoots seeing a red leg in the line up at the end of the day and my grandfather said they should shoot everyone they saw.   Our farm and my uncles made up about 500acres and three times a season it was shot and coveys of fifteen to twenty greys coming out of a turnip crop was the norm and we would do five drives.   Vermin where not tolerated.

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I see many Grey partridges every day. They are all wild and are doing pretty well here on the Wolds. 

Most have been paired up since January but there are some single cocks making nuisances of themselves trying to break up long established relationships.

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Yep pretty rare these days due to lack of keepering and rise in predators.  I recall showing a client around an old T2 Hangar in Oxfordshire that had been used as a grain store and was to developed. On entering a covey of grey partridges got up and headed out of the broken windows at the other end. One misjudged it and hit the frame dropping to the floor. I went up and popped it into my pocket. I still remember the look on the clients face when he asked what I was going to do with it. “Well it will either have recovered by the time we leave or it will be in the pot for tea tomorrow”. It went in the pot!

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10 hours ago, TRINITY said:

On my daily exercise walk today I saw a pair of English partridge. A very rare site nowadays in the area where I live. On returning home I checked the RSPB website and saw they are now on the red list. The general view suggests their decline is quite serious. If this opinion is accepted, do you think it is a good thing to keep shooting them or give them a break as they seem to need all the help they can get.

Posted 10 hours ago, but could have been 10 years ago !

That's when most folk started seriously easing off them.

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12 hours ago, TRINITY said:

On my daily exercise walk today I saw a pair of English partridge. A very rare site nowadays in the area where I live. On returning home I checked the RSPB website and saw they are now on the red list. The general view suggests their decline is quite serious. If this opinion is accepted, do you think it is a good thing to keep shooting them or give them a break as they seem to need all the help they can get.

As for numbers of Grey Partridge.........I think I would sooner get my info from the GWCT than the RSPB

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1 hour ago, panoma1 said:

As for numbers of Grey Partridge.........I think I would sooner get my info from the GWCT than the RSPB

Agreed! . . . . . Great to see and hear about. Not doing to bad in Suffolk. Got them on 4 farms in small numbers. Bred well last year and one farm had covey of 17 going in to Autumn. Out of control dogs and the recent influx of wandering/walkers disturbing them and other birds and animals not helping. Two shoots rear and have enough to shoot good numbers.     NB

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  Over here in western Canada we call them Huns or Hungarian Partridge. Introduced about 110 years back and done incredibly well. Harsh winters will knock them back but recover in a few years. Right now they are paired up and I  see 8-10 pair just on roads edge. Our coveys seem to average 12 birds in fall. Coyotes , fox and skunks are the main predator. Right now on my farm it seems like we will have equal to the best covey years. My home farm is about 1500 acres and I call an excellent bird crop one bird per acre.   

     Fabulous sport.

Edited by dogone
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