Can partridges be saved from extinction?

IRELAND has several species of wild chicken. The pheasant is the most successful of them, but it’s not really an Irish bird.

Introduced in the 16th century, pheasants have thrived and the population is growing. The same, however, can’t be said for its smaller cousin, the grey partridge. This is a true native, a bird which arrived ‘under its own steam’, probably at the end of the last ice age.

The partridge prefers to run along the ground than to fly. Flying off over the sea is not its thing and it does not migrate. Apart from some foreign birds released here in the 1930s, the Irish population has been isolated for a long time and has become unique. To our shame, we neglected to protect the attractive little partridge and it is on the verge of extinction.

Now, at the ‘eleventh hour’, the cavalry have come riding over the hill. The men with guns, on this occasion, are from the National Association of Regional Game Councils. They are supported by the National Parks and Wildlife Service and the situation is looking better for our partridges. Last week, Minister for the Environment, Dick Roche, launched the National Grey Partridge Conservation Project Ltd, a joint venture between the Irish Grey Partridge Conservation Trust and the NARGC.

The partridge is a plump, rotund bird, slightly bigger than a mistle thrush. It’s head looks too small for its body and its legs appear ridiculously short for such a portly creature. The cock is a particularly handsome fellow, grey underneath, with a black crescent on the belly and an orange face. The hen, like most of the chicken family, is duller.

‘Partridge’ comes from the Latin name ‘perdix’. In Greek mythology, Perdix was the sister of Daedalus. She had a son, who was so gifted that Daedalus became jealous of him. He pushed the boy off a tower, but the gods intervened and turned the youth into a partridge before he reached the ground. He has been afraid of heights ever since, which is why partridges always fly so close to the ground. Even at Christmas, partridges never perch in trees.

Like the pheasant, this is a bird of open grasslands and fields of cereal crops, although it dislikes cover which is taller than its head. The seeds and leaves of grasses and clovers are the favourite food, but it will take the occasional insect.

Partridge society is quite complex. This is a sociable bird, which gathers into flocks of 20 outside the breeding season.

A ‘covey’ consists of a family with a few non-breeding, adult hangers on. Two families may merge to form a joint covey and all-adult coveys are possible. The groups are loosely territorial, but they tend to wander with a ‘moving territory’ around them.

Farmyard chickens, turkeys and pheasants are polygamous, groups of females being ‘owned’ by a dominant male. Partridges, rather surprisingly given their covey lifestyle, don’t go in for harems and are strictly monogamous. Pairs even stay together from year to year.

Young males leave their own group and join another to select a mate, a practice which enables them to avoid incestuous unions. Occasionally, when two flocks blunder into each other and a row develops between them, a pair may form, Romeo-and-Juliet-style, across the tribal divide.

The female builds the nest in a hollow on the ground. Prolific breeders, a Finnish partridge holds the record for the world’s largest clutch of eggs: she had 26. Nineteen is the average partridge clutch in Finland. The norm here is 16. The hen does the incubating and the babies are largely self-feeding.

The bird was once found throughout Ireland and widely hunted. In the decades following the great famine of the 1840s, less wheat was grown here and numbers began to fall.

Modern farming methods don’t suit grassland birds and pesticides destroy the insects on whose larvae baby partridges feed. The bird has now gone from every county except one; a tiny population survives on cutaway bog at Boora, in Offaly. Only 22 birds remained in 2001.

With the help of the Wildlife Service, the Heritage Council and the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland, the Partridge Trust established a reserve on the bog. The habitat is managed in the interests of the birds. Ground vegetation is kept optimal and foxes, hooded crows and domestic cats are ‘controlled’.

A captive breeding programme commenced in 2004. Six pairs bred that year and 56 young were produced. Overall numbers have remained low, however, and the trust has been forced to introduce birds from abroad to boost the native stock. This was a fairly drastic measure. Bringing in foreigners genetically alters a population but, faced with the imminent threat of extinction, it was the lesser of evils. Estonian partridges are genetically close to Irish ones, and, in February 2004, 21 birds were imported from there. In 2005, the Irish partridge population was 140.

In future phases of the operation, partridge reserves will be established elsewhere in the country. With changes in agricultural practices and careful land management, the population should slowly regenerate. One day, hopefully in the not too distant future, numbers will have increased to such an extent that the partridge will become, once again, a viable game species.