Grey partridge pairs up ninefold on Gloucestershire shoot

Spring pair counts at Ponsonby Farms in Gloucestershire have reached 26.5 pairs per square kilometre, up from around 2.8 in 2017, on ground that the British Association of Shooting and Conservation’s (BASC) case study, published on 2 September, says was never classic partridge country. The wild grey partridge recovery at the farm, from 17 pairs to 159 in nine years, is presented by the association as a working model of habitat, insect food and predator management pulling together.

What has changed at Ponsonby Farms since 2017?

George Ponsonby farms about 3,500 acres of owned, rented and contract ground, with the shoot run over 1,500 acres of it. Soil types are mixed and there is a good deal of woodland, so the plan was to build what the birds need rather than wait for perfect ground.

Under environmental scheme options the farm has established 49ha of flower-rich covers and 30ha of winter bird food, with 12 beetle banks running through the larger fields. The banks give nesting cover and hold the beetles and spiders that chicks feed on, and the case study notes the birds sometimes choose them over hedge banks, possibly for the protection they offer from predators.

Insects get further help from the sprayer staying in the shed: routine insecticide use on the arable crops has been cut back, with no preventative applications.

Predator control timed to the nesting season

Rats, crows and foxes are controlled from March to July, the months when grey partridges and the farm’s other ground-nesting birds are most vulnerable. It is the third leg of the recovery: cover to nest in, insects to feed on and a spring in which broods can survive.

New Sustainable Farming Incentive agreements have added overwinter cover crops, and George believes winter losses are now at their lowest level by some margin, part of the reason counts took their latest step up.

What has the recovery done for other farmland birds?

A winter bird survey commissioned in 2020 from ornithologists Neil Harris and Matt Wilmot found declining and threatened farmland species in concentrations considerably higher than in the surrounding countryside, and the surveyors singled out skylark, yellowhammer and corn bunting as beneficiaries of the partridge work. In 2022 the farm won the Purdey Gold Award for Game and Conservation.

What happens next

The habitat is in place for another winter, with the new agreements’ overwinter cover now part of the rotation, and keeper Niall Wright carries on the fieldwork begun with Frank Snudden. The full case study can be read on the BASC website.