looduskalender.ee

Partridges at Ere bay on the western coast

 

 

If partridges should happen to stray into your garden in winter they are always many together – as an old-time chicken flock. They look for shelter from the wintery winds and of course they look for food; the visitors could be offered grain for instance. The doings of partridges are a pretty view and they allow their activities to be observed nicely.

 

The pigeon-sized partridges with their sturdy apparition have a reddish-brown face; the back with differing pattern according to gender is mottled in brown, neck and breast are grey. The males’ chestnut brown horse-shoe shaped breast patch is more prominent than on the females. Beak and legs are grey. The birds are about 30 centimetres long and weigh over 400 grams.

 

Numbers have decreased strongly in Estonia as well as in all of Europe, during the last 50 years by five times. Here the situation isn’t quite bad yet, in winter we can still meet partridges, some twenty thousand individuals. Partridge flocks begin to fall apart in mid-March to form the nesting time pairs, but we will tell about that towards spring.

 

Although partridges are on the list of game birds in Estonia they are not shot by hunters because of the decline in numbers.

 

 The night can be successfully spent under a  trailer when disturbers are not moving in the yard

See the partridge observations: LINK