Amagical day on the greys

Here was a gathering of 50 beaters and flankers, visiting headkeepers and their teams - an almost Edwardian scene. It was an incredible assembly of the great and the good of grey partridges in the south of England Great Lemhill Gloucestershire | Guns enjoy a day of camaraderie and challenging sport on a pioneering, Purdey Award-winning grey partridge manor

- RORY KNIGHT BRUCE

NOT FAR from the pretty town of Lechlade in Gloucestershire, the land, mainly flat and composed of Cotswold brash, tidy hedges and tight field margins, takes on an altogether different appearance. The hedges suddenly become five metres high, sown with all manner of variegated plants such as hawthorn, blackthorn and dog rose, and resemble the colourful headdresses of warriors in an unruly charge in one of those Matabele wars.

So flat is the landscape, much written about by Richard Jefferies in his nature diaries of the 19th century, that miles away in one direction can be seen the Marlborough Downs, and in another, looking west, the pine clump of May Hill, near Newent, an inspiration for the Dymock poets Edward Thomas and Robert Frost. Above may be seen many red kites and the fearsome presence of Hercules aircraft practising out of RAF Brize Norton.

But below, underneath wide, flower-rich field margins, unharvested headlands, abundant hedgerows and beetle banks, a remarkable transformation of ecological stillness has taken place. Since 2017, this has been the grey partridge revival project of George Ponsonby, ranging over 2,000 acres of his own farm and six other farms over which he has the shooting rights. The grey numbers have risen from 17 breeding pairs to 135 in five years, producing a habitat not just for the wild grey partridges but a myriad of other birds and wildlife, resulting in the hope of a couple of days shooting greys and four or five days at wild pheasants.