These are neat birds and an awful lot of fun to be looking at. Thanks for sharing Mr. Follows. Love the hens especially with their type, feather quality and not overly dark color. Partridge can be a bit different on both sides of the water. Here in North America it is often extremely dark; so dark that it can be hard to see the hackle striping from a few feet away as the dark cherry red is itself nearly black. These lighter colored partridge are very striking partly because the color contrasts can be seen. At any rate the color has existed for some breeds for a very long time and is not always perfect even now. Meaning black (or blue) breasts may still be laced or somewhat taken over with red color. Especially with cockerels. Hen color as liked by some tends to breed these unsound colored breasts and they themselves may have been sired by a similar male. Even sound colored cock breasts might have shown an amazing amount of color as a growing, maturing cockerel. At any rate I am going to stare at these birds shared with us and enjoy the positives shown rather than get overly concerned about exactitude of color. It may not be perfect, may be very far from it, but it's an excellent work in progress in my estimation. Wondered too what sort of geese are in the background? Looks like they have plenty of substance and size.