Ireland’s elusive grey partridge in fight against extinction

On a blustery day this winter I joined farmer Brian Dooley and agricultural adviser Michael Martyn in a field in Lea Beg near Boora, Co Offaly. Above us a small flock of lapwing swirled in the wind, wheeling back and forth, interspersed with a few golden plover.

It was a captivating sight, but I wasn’t there to look upwards. We were there in search of the native grey partridge, a species so elusive and rare that the likelihood of seeing one was slim.

Dooley took us into his field of maize, which forms part of a block of 100 acres of land that he bought in 1989 from Bord na Móna. The land had previously been in his family’s ownership, but in the 1950s the semi-State compulsorily purchased it for industrial peat extraction. It paid £15 an acre for the agriculturally productive areas and 10 shillings for each acre of the bogland.

Today Dooley mainly uses the land to grow grass to feed his herd of cattle, but over the past 15 years he has developed a fondness for the grey partridge, whose last remaining wild outpost is here in Co Offaly.

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Grey partridges are equally fond of farming, though not today’s intensive model. They are more suited to a type of mixed farming typical of Ireland in the 1960s, when every inch of land wasn’t put into production and artificial fertilisers and chemicals weren’t common. Back then tillage crops were sown in small fields, and areas of rough ground at the periphery of fields – in some parts of the country known as “hare’s corners” – were left alone.

Partridges peck grain from the harvest and use overgrown areas to hide from predators. This is particularly important during breeding because they nest on the ground and are vulnerable to foxes and American mink.

The grey partridge was first surveyed in 1991, and wild populations were found in Wexford and Offaly. By 2006, with just 20 pairs left and faced with the extinction of this bird, the National Parks & Wildlife Service used public money to buy 600 acres of cutaway bog in Co Offaly. Since that time they have worked with the Irish Grey Partridge Conservation Trust and local farmers like Dooley to restore partridge numbers.

About 15 years ago, spurred on by a publicly-funded scheme called Glas, operated by the Department of Agriculture, Dooley dedicated a 12-metre margin around the outside of his fields to the partridge. In a third of this ground he sows a mix of grasses that form a thick cover for partridges to nest and hide; in the remaining nine metres he grows a “brood-rearing” mixed crop of winter-hardy Caledonian kale, Lucerne (alfalfa), chicory radish and linseed.

As the three of us walked along this margin Michael Martyn explained just how vital these flowering plants are to the survival of partridge chicks, who depend on a protein-rich diet of insects to grow. Without enough insects the chicks will quickly become emaciated and die. Martyn said that farmers must also avoid spraying any herbicides and insecticides on the fields.

In many ways the Green Low-Carbon Agri-Environment Scheme (Glas) for the grey partridge was an attempt at recreating aspects of how farms were managed in the past before intensification and monoculture took over.

Dooley walked ahead, scouring the stubble for birds. He told me that he sees partridges most days. He often goes up on his tractor to feed his cattle and would have to abruptly slow down because he’d spot a pair of partridges joined by a gaggle of chicks – they lay up to 20 eggs and can have up to 18 young – walking together in a line on the road. Partridges form strong family bonds, and the parents and chicks are known collectively as a “covey”. Occasionally this can include a few cousins.

The Glas scheme ended in 2022. Public money was used to fund a new initiative called Acres (Agri-Climate Rural Environment Scheme), and the targeted actions for the grey partridge were removed. The payments to farmers for measures such as growing winter bird food are about a third less than those under Glas. For his efforts Dooley had received an annual payment of €7,000 under Glas; in the new scheme that has dropped by a third.

Not surprisingly there’s been a significant exit from the scheme by farmers in Offaly, who can earn more from farming for food. With it goes the considerable weight of their expertise and enthusiasm for this species. In 2019 about 900 pairs of birds were recorded. Martyn, an indefatigable partridge enthusiast, is in no doubt that these numbers will decline.

We were nearing the end of our walk when eight partridges exploded out of the stubble into the air, providing us a short glimpse of their grey and auburn plumage. The covey flew diagonally across the field, low to the ground, and landed about 40m away.

Unlike the aerial performance of lapwing in the skies above us, this family of grey partridge quickly disappeared, blending seamlessly into the wild cover Dooley had sown for them along the field’s periphery.

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