Making hens meet
Springtime sets me thinking about partridges. The curlew come back and lapwings dance noisily in the fields but our grey partridges have long since been confined to the history books. I’ve had a long-term ambition to restore their numbers here, but that’s not easy in the modern countryside where everything seems to run against them.
I often read of partridge reintroduction projects in Shooting Times and it’s encouraging to realise how dedicated some keepers are. It can be done and, in trying to unlock the benefits of decent habitat work and a fair amount of predator control, I’ve been tempted to look back to bygone days for inspiration.
When I first started looking
