Just a brief update on the grey partridges which have now been up on the hill for two months. Although it’s risking every cynical twist of fate to say it aloud, I haven’t lost a single one since I got them in July, and they are pretty well settled in the game cover. Since I put out a small handful of cock birds towards the end of the week last week, they have been much less loyal to the immediate vicinity of their pen, and I wonder if one of those cocks had been responsible for keeping them so determinedly rooted to the same few square feet. They now range throughout the game cover and into the adjoining field, which is mainly rushes and clover, and they make short flights back and forth to their feed hoppers as the day goes by.
I still have three birds (two hens and a cock) in the release pen, and I can’t help but think that the tremendous racket these birds make has at least some effect on the released birds. I can hear them skreiking back and forth to one another, and if the call birds are not solely responsible for keeping the released birds in the vicinity, they are at least acting as a handy reference point for them as they explore the valley. I have seen the released birds skreik back to the call birds, almost as if they were touching base and getting their bearings as they moved through the thick undergrowth. It’s been fascinating, and certainly warrants further exploration over the next couple of years.
If nothing else, watching these birds grow up and develop into maturity has been a real pleasure. Thanks again to Kev, the long suffering reader of this blog who supplied them in the first place!
Bog Myrtle & Peat 
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