GAME ON

from Dales Life Autumn 2022

TO DINE FOR

Brian Pike charts the mixed fortunes of some of our best-known game birds

orkshire is renowned for the range and quality of its fresh game, and as the nights grow chillier many local chefs will be rewriting their menus to include a selection of hearty game dishes.

Numerous bird species are hunted as game in the UK, including duck, goose, woodcock, snipe and plover, but the iconic game birds are pheasant, partridge (grey and red-legged) and grouse (red and black). The Dales is one of the few areas in the country where you can see all five of these species.

COMMON PHEASANT

(Phasianus colchicus)

The pheasant is by far the most colourful of the pack. The female may be relatively dull but the cock pheasant sports lustrous copper plumage mottled with black, along with a white neck ring, a blue-green head and a red wattle. The species originated in China, and by classical times had spread as far west as the Balkans. Pheasants were introduced to the British Isles several times, initially by the Romans. But it wasn’t until the 1830s that the birds became a common sight thanks to the growing fashion for organised shoots and intensive management by gamekeepers. Nowadays millions of captive-reared birds are released in the UK every year.

Left to their own devices, pheasants could happily survive unaided in lightly wooded countryside throughout much of lowland Britain, although the population would be a tiny fraction of its current level – and individuals would likely be leaner and fitter than the plump, well-fed specimens that struggle to take to the air to avoid oncoming traffic.

GREY PARTRIDGE

(Perdix perdix)

Immediately recognisable by the male’s distinctive orange face and dark, horseshoeshaped chest patch, the grey partridge is, unlike the pheasant, a British native species. It was once widespread but numbers have declined steeply since the 1950s. The grey partridge is now locally extinct in many places and has been placed on the ‘Red List’ of endangered birds.

Whilst it is still legal to shoot grey partridge, the Game & Wildlife Conservation Trust (GWCT) frowns on killing them except “where careful management has produced a shootable surplus”.

Young grey partridges forage for insects living on annual weeds that grow amongst cereal crops, and consequently modern herbicides and insecticides have greatly reduced their food supply. GWCT is encouraging farmers to adopt a range of measures such as creating herbicide- and insecticide-free ‘conservation headlands’ and managing hedge banks to provide cover and nesting sites.

RED-LEGGED PARTRIDGE

(Alectoris rufa)

Unlike its grey cousin, the red-legged partridge, also known as the ‘French partridge’, is a non-native species. The first successful introduction was in 1770 and the bird is now captive-reared and released in large numbers throughout much of lowland England.

The red-legged partridge is a plump, handsome bird with a white throat and bold black bars on its flanks – and, of course, red legs. Both males and females look very similar.

Because they spend their time in grassland or amongst arable crops feasting on seeds and roots, red-legged partridges are easiest to spot in autumn and winter. Even when they’re not visible their presence is often betrayed by their distinctive rasping call.

Our native grey partridge nests and roosts on the ground and it never perches in trees, but the red-legged partridge will occasionally do so. The ‘partridge in a pear tree’ in the Yuletide song, then, is undoubtedly the French partridge rather than its English cousin.

RED GROUSE

(Lagopus lagopus)

Pheasant and partridge occur throughout the British Isles, but both species of grouse, red and black, are an upland speciality. Of the two, the red grouse is by far the commonest, although numbers are currently in decline.

The red grouse has the distinction of being Britain’s only endemic bird, that’s to say it is the one species of fowl that is found here and nowhere else in the world. Its typical habitat is open heather moorland, where it feeds on the shoots, seeds, berries and flowers of heather and other upland plants.

Red grouse are remarkably tough, hardy birds that are happy to breed at altitudes of up to 2,000 feet; the Latin name for the species, lagopus, means ‘hare-footed’ and refers to the pale grey feathers that insulate the bird’s legs and feet against the winter chill.

They are also remarkably stubborn in their determination to stick to their own small territories, and cock birds will defend their favoured patch aggressively, even attacking humans who inadvertently trespass on their domain.

OPPOSITE Red-legged partridge on farm track TOP LEFT Female grey partridge with chicks in grass TOP RIGHT Female pheasant drinking from stream BOTTOM LEFT Female red grouse in heather BOTTOM RIGHT Male red grouse in flight

BLACK GROUSE

(Tetrao tetrix)

The cock pheasant has its gaudy colours, but the black grouse, with its blue-black plumage, red eye wattle and spray of startlingly white tail feathers, is arguably far more spectacular.

These tail feathers are displayed to startling effect in spring when the cock birds strut and posture to impress hen birds at traditional courtship sites known as ‘leks’, some of which have been in use for generations.

Unfortunately ‘lekking’ is a rare sight nowadays. According to one estimate, black grouse numbers fell by a staggering 95% over the course of the 20th century, largely due to loss of habitat.

Whereas red grouse stick single-mindedly to heather moorland, black grouse are far more finicky in their requirements, only thriving in areas where mixed woodland, rough pasture and moorland or heathland converge. Blanket planting of conifers, drainage of marginal farmland, over-grazing of heather moorland and the destruction of southern heathlands have all but eliminated the complex mixed habitat they require.

ABOVE Black grouse chick in upland meadow BOTTOM Male black grouse displaying All images © RSPB Images Once a relatively common sight, even close to London, the black grouse had become extinct in southern England by the 1970s. Apart from a handful of birds in Wales, the Pennine hills between Wensleydale and Carlisle are their last remaining English stronghold. Attempts at hand-rearing grouse are usually unsuccessful, but hopefully ongoing landscape conservation measures can reverse the decline and safeguard this remarkable bird for future generations.