Best birds are taken as red

Once upon a time there was a bird called an ogridge. It was the invention of the now long gone Ormsby Game Services, of Louth in Lincolnshire. A hybrid between a redleg cock and a chukar hen, it was proclaimed as the partridge of the future. These two species of Alectoris are so close genetically that they are interfertile, and at first glance the offspring look so much like a pure redleg that you would hardly notice the difference.

In the 1960s and early 1970s, when the idea of rearing and releasing red-legged partridges in much the same way as pheasants was relatively new, producers hit on a problem. Unlike first-year pheasants and grey partridges, young redleg hens