Around the world there are many species of bird that are reared in captivity and then released to be hunted for sport and for food. In Europe, one of the most popular birds for this is the red legged partridge. These are small birds, with wingspans of 47 to 50cm and growing to weights of 400 to 550grams they are slightly smaller than an average woodpigeon. Red legged partridge are a rather complicated bird to describe as they have so many colours and patterns but ill start with their legs, which I would argue are more pink than red. They have chestnut undersides, brown backs, barred brown and cream sides and grey chests. Their throats are mottled black and grey with a cream coloured bib, they have a cream eye stripe, brown on top of their heads and both their beaks and a ring around each eye is red. Although they can fly when they think they are in imminent danger, most of the time they prefer to walk or run. Adult red legged partridges are mainly seed eaters, although they will sometimes eat new shoots, leaves and occasionally insects. Young birds are more omnivorous eating a larger proportion of invertebrates to get the protein that they need to grow. In the UK they are mostly found around farmland, which is where they are released, but they can also venture into grasslands and urban areas, sometimes being seen in parks and gardens. There are several reports of them living deliberately with wild rabbits, but I cant find any hard evidence to support that so perhaps take it with a pinch of salt. Although the vast majority of red legged partridges in this country are captive reared, somewhere around 6 million birds every year, there is a wild breeding population of between 90 and 250 thousand pairs. Pairs form in early spring and then the male creates a series of scrape type nests on the ground. Quite uniquely the female will often lay a clutch of eggs in one nest and then move and lay a second clutch in a different nest. If this happens, the male will incubate the first clutch and rear those chicks himself whilst the female incubates the second clutch and will rear those chicks on her own. If the female only uses one nest, she will do most of the incubation with occasional help from the male. Each pair will produce between 10 and 16 speckled cream eggs that measure about 4 cm in length and take 23 to 24 days to hatch. Once the chicks do hatch, they are precocial, and are up and about within hours of hatching and can feed themselves straight away. The young birds are covered in mottled brown fluff but develop quickly. They are able to fly within 14 days but stay together as a family group into the winter. Red legged partridges will only nest one time per year and although they are not monogamous as rule, they do sometimes mate with the same bird in multiple years. All of the red legged partridges in the UK, are at some point descended from introduced birds. They were first brought to the country in the 17th century from France, but they are also native to Spain, Portugal, Germany, Andorra and northern Italy. In some of these native ranges the birds numbers have been slowly declining since the 1990s and wild breeding bird numbers have also slowly decreased here, although their range does seem to be spreading northwards. They have a low average lifespan in areas where they are hunted but can live for 3 to 5 years outside of these places. The oldest ringed wild bird survived for 7 years, 7 months and 2 days. #partridge #nature #britishwildlife

Thanks to Frederick for letting me use his nesting footage, the original footage can be found here: [ Ссылка ]

Some of the other footage and images used in this video were obtained through creative commons, the originals and their licence details can be found here: [ Ссылка ] [ Ссылка ] [ Ссылка ] [ Ссылка ] [ Ссылка ] [ Ссылка ] [ Ссылка ] [ Ссылка ] [ Ссылка ] [ Ссылка ] [ Ссылка ] [ Ссылка ] [ Ссылка ] [ Ссылка ] [ Ссылка ] [ Ссылка ] [ Ссылка ] [ Ссылка ] [ Ссылка ] [ Ссылка ] [ Ссылка ] [ Ссылка ]

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