Kitchen Garden Forum

I know this is strange, but i'm getting the feeling no one believes me.

Grey/English Partridge?

I'm a gullible soul so let's scan the bird book.
My AA/Reader's Digest from 1973 can be wrong on distributions but it puts Grouse as nowhere near you so they seem unlikely.
Let's list a few sizes of brown birds:
Female Pheasant 23" including 9" tail
Partridge 12"
Quail 7" - maybe a bit small and distribution doesn't look right
Woodcock 13½" - "a wading bird that has taken to the land, especially to the kind of woodland that is opened up by clearings and rides", OK for distribution but maybe not open countryside.
Doesn't seem much else, better dig out your camouflage and get a closer look (and a listen might help).

Evening Geoff, thank you for taking the trouble to look in your book.

The field runs down to woodland, and there are Woodcock down there, but these birds were quite a bit bigger...

They certainly weren't Partridge, and i'm sure they weren't pheasant poults, but they didn't look big enough for Hen Pheasants.

I did google, "Grouse in Bedfordshire", to see if anything came up about people breeding any, or escaped Grouse, but nothing.

I have just googled Red Grouse, and although the birds we saw did look very much like them, i think these birds had slightly longer necks.

I'll leave it there for now, and hope that i see them again.

There are two species of partridge in England, the usual one http://www.rspb.org.uk/wildlife/birdgui ... index.aspx and this one http://www.rspb.org.uk/wildlife/birdgui ... partridge/ so OH coulf the red leg be your Grouse.

First two swallows just spotted this evening. A little earlier than usual for here.

Just heard the cuckoo but still we don't have any swallows.

I saw two swallows today, unfortunately I can't say if they are late because I never took note of when they arrived.

One of my great joys is seeing then feeding when I cut the paddock grass, fabulous arial athletes.

Richard, I would think it's a female pheasant.

"Our" cuckoo arrived on 26 April which is earlier than last year but very much in line with previous years. Swallows are here but not in large numbers. Maybe the NE wind is keeping them back at the moment. Now looking out/listening for the first swift! Shouldn't be long.

Cuckoo yesterday, Swifts today. Must be Summer, pity about the cold wind.

Heard a very persistent cuckoo down along the river/canal, marshland with trees.