The world’s heaviest flying bird flaps on to pastures new but remains endangered, says expert
You might think it a great time for the great bustards, who have been found breeding in a new location, but there is a wider problem facing the UK’s ‘big bird’, an expert says.
Great bustards, the birds whose male specimens are among the world’s heaviest living flying animals, have been found breeding in a new location. For the first time, Cranborne Chase Landscape Trust announced, chicks had been found in their National Landscape last May.
Two chicks were found in a field of sainfoin after a farmer told the Great Bustard Group (GBG) that he would shortly begin mowing a crop and the eggs were rescued under licence by volunteers and hand-reared.
'The bird's range is slowly expanding,' an expert says.
The GBG have been releasing chicks on Salisbury Plain in Wiltshire since 2004, including these latest two bustards. David Waters, who set up the GBG in 1997, says the birds have been breeding very close by for a long time, so the announcement from Cranborne Chase is not massive news for them. ‘The bird's range is slowly expanding and their population is slowly increasing, but the real story is that the Great Bustard is the only bird in the UK which is globally endangered [...] I always put that into context by reminding people that giant pandas and snow leopards aren’t.’
David, a former policeman, continues: ‘Our UK population is slowly expanding in numbers and range, which is great. We are chuffed to bits that they are breeding in Cranbourne Chase — but, for us, it’s not the strategic breakthrough that other news outlets have said that it is.’
The bustard was hunted to extinction in the 19th century, but Russian chicks were secretly reintroduced to Wiltshire in 1998. It has been the emblem of Wiltshire Council since it was established in 2009 and the UK’s population of the bird is exclusively located in the county.
Pliny the Elder named the great bustard.
With their slightly aristocratic look and purposeful stride, the species take many aback. At just over 3ft tall, weighing up to 40lbs and with an 8ft wing span, the male bustard in particular is a striking sight. It is thought the bird was first attracted to England's open grassland and cultivated fields in the middle of the 15th century.
Pliny the Elder named it, and despite sounding similar to the name one gives a child born out of wedlock, bustard actually means ‘slow bird’. Ironically, bustards are quite fast, as well as being enormous. Apparently, they are also delicious, a factor which led to their near extinction in the first place, along with a Victorian penchant for collecting unusual eggs. The last bird in Wiltshire is reported to have been killed in 1873, before their reintroduction.
