The sun is fast falling away towards the fields, turning the water in the tractor ruts golden, and somewhere up ahead, in a strip of mustard crop, a cock bird is calling. “It’s just this time of year, in the last few days before Christmas,” says retired gamekeeper Gerald Gray, as though telling me a secret, “when grey partridges might start pairing up. Particularly if there’s a bit of weather on the way.”
We’re in the middle of the Hilborough Estate in Norfolk, where a healthy population of grey partridges is holding on. There are no signs, but you know you have arrived at Hilborough because there are rough margins round the edge of every field and dense hedges sprawl almost three metres wide. It’s farming as it once was and it’s everything grey partridges need to thrive.
“There they go,” Gerald says quietly as we get to the end of the mustard. I try to count them but they
