fishydreams

Last Tuesday I came across a red-legged partridge on the way to play squash with Nick Edwards.

I suppose I should point out, for the sake of clarity, that it was me going to play squash with Nick and not the partridge. Having said that, Nick wiped the floor with me, as he does most weeks, and I imagine the partridge would have had about the same success had it decided step in for me.

It is not at all unusual to come across these birds in the kind of open country and scrub that they favour but I was pretty surprised to come across one on the path at the Club del Sol Tennis Club!

I was pretty excited to see this thing and whipped out my mobile phone to take a photo but the bird kept its distance from me and I was not able to take a reasonable photograph.

Red-legged partridges breed naturally in Spain and in southern Europe but they have been introduced elsewhere and can be found in the UK. They have even been introduced to New Zealand although I don´t know how well established they are there.

When I was a kid, I remember thinking of how cool it would be to be able to fly. It would have been my chosen super-power if I could choose only one. So it strikes me as odd that the red-legged partridge, in common with many game birds (it is a member of the pheasant family) has a curious aversion to flying. It just walks its way out of trouble most of the time and only takes to the air as a last resort.

Red-legged partridges are just beautiful. I won´t show you the crappy photos from my phone but attach instead a picture of couple of the birds, in case you are not familiar with them.

I found this lovely picture on this site: http://galleryhip.com/partridge.html