Ants for the English

We don’t often think of ants as being vitally important but when they disappeared in 1970, the partridges went with them, writes Tower-Bird

- Tower-Bird

The review of the Game Conservancy’s work for the year contains a report based on the findings of the partridge survival project on an estate on the South Downs near where I live in Sussex. This gives one much food for thought regarding the very necessary forms of nutriment that growing partridge chicks once enjoyed but, which, under modern methods of farming, are denied them. I have always, rightly or wrongly, considered myself a good partridge man, though my hand-rearing experiences have been limited to a few coops of English partridges, though more of red-legged. I always found the red-legged easier to rear, it being more enterprising, lively and independent. On our downlands we had plenty of ant heaps, and partridge coops were usually sited outside a sunny southern-facing covert and yards out on the pasture rich with ant and other insect life.

Those of us who at one time almost lived the lives of rabbits, spending hours with our heads stuck down holes setting traps, or ferreting during hard weather in winter, and who have never ceased to abhor and condemn the introduction of myxomatosis, and who, at the same time had a good knowledge of partridges, can see only too plainly how myxomatosis and the decimation of rabbit stocks definitely affected the welfare of partridges, especially following cold springs and wet hatching times.

Ant absence

Always being interested in such matters, my eye caught a letter in The Field from Major WV Burdon and, though not wanting to steal someone else’s thunder, I was impressed by what this correspondent had to say, and, though I have no intention of quoting from the letter at length, I will quote a couple of points that particularly held my attention.