Partridge
Surfbirds News: RSPB Archives
An analysis of 124 of Europe’s common birds has revealed that over a 26-year period 56 species (45 per cent) have declined across 20 European countries.
This alarming rate of decline has fuelled fears for the future of many of the continent’s birds, including Christmas favourites like our own ‘partridge in a pear tree and turtle dove’.
Five of the ten common European species showing the greatest declines are birds of farmland habitats. And worryingly, a comparison of new and old EU Member states shows that the declines of farmland birds of the newest member states appears to be mimicking those of longer-established EU states, where the increasing intensification of farming has been the main cause of the declines.
Partridge, Cleveland, © Stephen David Keightley, from the Surfbirds galleries
Dr Mark Avery, the RSPB’s Conservation Director, said: 'Seeing a countryside increasingly bereft of familiar birds, like the grey partridge and lapwing, is deeply worrying. These declines are so severe that in Europe they are considered to be heading towards continental extinction – it is only the sizeable populations of both birds in Asia, which prevents them from being considered at risk of global extinction.
'A recent study by the Game and Wildlife Conservation Trust has revealed that the grey partridge faces additional pressure in the UK from those who shoot grey partridges in the mistaken belief that they are shooting the more common and introduced red-legged partridge.
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