Grey Partridge Call MP3s
A clear Grey Partridge recording for calling practice or covey location, plus a quick way to learn the species' harsh, grating call before you're in the field.
Also known as
Recordings (5)
About this species
Around 30 cm in length, the Grey Partridge (Perdix perdix) is a ground-dwelling gamebird: grey and finely barred, the male carrying a dark chestnut horseshoe on the belly. It favours mixed arable farmland with hedgerows, weedy margins and rough corners.
It gives a hoarse, rusty 'kierr-ikk' like a creaking gate, mostly at dusk. It takes small seeds and aquatic invertebrates sieved from the surface and shallow mud. It lives in tight family coveys through autumn and winter, exploding into low, fast flight when pressed. Closely tied to farmland and scrub, its fortunes have long mirrored those of traditional mixed agriculture across Europe.
Legal use
Grey Partridge has suffered one of the steepest population crashes of any European farmland bird — UK long-term monitoring puts the decline at somewhere around 90% since the late 1960s/1980s depending on the study period — driven mainly by agricultural intensification, though overhunting was a significant factor in southern Europe historically. As a result, its legal status is inconsistent: hunting has been banned in Greece since 1984, remains tightly quota-restricted or regionally closed in several other European countries, while limited, managed hunting continues elsewhere including parts of the UK and continental Europe where populations (often supplemented by releases) are stable enough to support it. Given this decline and the resulting patchwork of restrictions, verify current status before any hunting use and see our full country-by-country disclaimer.