Sooooo, after looking at the weather I decided to cheat a little and do a species that I didn't actually see today. The species is Red-legged Partridge (Alectoris rufa) and I saw them two days ago, in the same location where I photographed the fox (Day 18 - Red Fox).
Partridges are small, but stocky, gamebirds, a bit smaller than a pheasant, with round bodies and short tails, and we have two species in the UK. One, the Grey Partridge, is native to these islands but has undergone severe declines in recent decades and is on the 'red list' of Birds of Conservation Concern (Birds of Conservation Concern Leaflet). The Red-legged Partridge (sometimes known as the French Partridge) however is not native to Britain, and was introduced here from mainland Europe in the 1700s and is now a little less than twice as numerous as Grey Partridge. In some areas captive-bred birds are deliberately released for shooting.
You have almost certainly seen a picture of a Red-legged Partridge, on a Christmas card or perhaps wrapping paper, as it seems to be the species most commonly chosen to be the 'partridge in a pear tree' in the song 'The Twelve Days of Christmas'. From behind they look mostly sandy brown but they have a pair of long, whitish eyebrows, a clear white throat, a black necklace which breaks up into a broad band of dots on the breast, and a series of dark lines (black, rufous and grey) on the flanks. Oh, and the legs are a bright pinky-red colour.
Red-legged Partridges are birds of open country and particularly arable fields. These ones however, were walking along a little-used private road (but which is also a public foot-path) surrounded by industry and scrubby 'waste-land', just east of Middlesbrough. They were a long way away from me, which is why the pictures are not very good, but I wanted to include them here as they are the first ones I have seen since I moved to this area and I am not sure if they have actually been seen before, in the place where I saw them.
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