I can also offer a bah-humbug to the notion that these birds would ever do something so obvious as to climb a pear tree.

A careful scan across a fallow field, which had been roughly ploughed in the autumn but never sown with a crop, revealed not one but five grey partridge. They were doing what these birds are really good at, quietly and surreptitiously going about the business of surviving another wintry day.

Not for them the bold brash striding out of a nearby cock pheasant, which was also finding food within this weedy field but, they keep an almost shy stance in life. All the better to avoid predators, the top hunter being man, as these beautiful birds are regarded as a “game bird” for those who somehow gain pleasure from shooting birds.

Happily, on this part of the moss birds are not so hunted but they cannot escape their inbuilt instinct to survive and this six-foot-plus, camera-wielding observer was treated with the usual crouching caution.

In truth I feel (unproven I admit) that they have got used to my admiring gaze over the past couple of months whenever I catch a sighting of them. Thus, after a brief pause in their feeding to check me out, they proceeded to creep about the field finding food to keep them strong on such a wintry day.

I wandered off into the breeze, leaving these birds to their understated meanderings about their open air larder.

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