This was a first for us. Although we see several pairs of Grey Partridges each year, we have never seen a family of them. We came across them in a large field that had been very recently "mucked". It was full of birds who were enjoying the insects on and around the muck. There were a large number of Gulls mainly Black-headed Gulls with a number of Herring Gull families and Lesser and Greater Blacked-backed Gulls. There were also a large number of Lapwing families and as we were watching them we came across this family of Grey Partridges, there were 2 adults and 8 juveniles probably about 4-6 weeks old. The bigger Gulls would have been able to take these younger birds as they are quite capable of swallowing young Rabbits and Puffins, there are plenty of videos on YouTube showing this. Whenever any Gulls approached the family they all flattened themselves on the ground and stayed perfectly still and they became very difficult to see. We lost them once when we moved the car and they took a while to re-locate. I don't have very good mobility so nearly all of our nature watching is done from the car parked on the roadside. We call our trips "Safaris" as we mooch around the byways and back lanes around Watton. As I have been recovering from 2 ops this was the first we'd done for a little while and we had been out for about 5 hours so we were homeward bound which was a shame because I would have liked to have spent more time looking at this field as I am sure there may have been some interesting birds there.

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