550 THE BIRDS OF YORKSHIRE. 



writers mentioned, the first to comment on the great Bustard 

 is the celebrated Yorkshire ornithologist, Marmaduke Tunstall, 

 F.R.S., of Wycliffe-on-Tees, who remarked : " Some still 

 remain on our Yorkshire Wolds. An acquaintance of mine 

 pursued for three days the last summer, without effect, a 

 brood [sic] of seven ; and one of twelve, at least, he had 

 heard of." 



The only other eighteenth century record is contained in 

 the " Sporting Magazine," imder date October 1792, thus : — 

 " Within these few days a Bustard was killed at Rudstone-on- 

 the- Wolds, by a gamekeeper belonging to Sir Griffith Boynton. 

 The width of the wings was seven feet over." 



Mr. W. H. St. Quintin also communicates an interesting 

 item of information, taken from an old estate book in his 

 possession, concerning the price paid by his ancestor, Sir 

 Wilham St. Quintin of Wansford, in the year 1760, to his 

 gamekeeper, Wm. Wiley, for Bustards ; these birds being 

 valued at two shillings. 



At the northern extremity of the Wolds, the chief and 

 last haunt of the Great Bustard seems to have been about 

 FHxton, Hunmanby, and Reighton. It was here — as she 

 informed Mr. Boynton — that the late Miss Charlotte Rickaby 

 of Bridlington Quay, when a girl, counted fifteen Great 

 Bustards in a field, while riding with her father from Bridling- 

 ton Quay to Flamborough, early in the last century ; and Sir 

 C. W. Strickland wrote that his grandfather. Sir William 

 Strickland, used to say he could remember a flock of about 

 five and twenty of them on the Wolds between Reighton and 

 Bridlington, and that the last of them was eaten at Boynton. 

 A farmer living at Reighton in 1830 told Sir Charles Anderson 

 that when he was a boy flocks of eight and ten together were 

 found all over the district. Mr. W. H. St Quintin, writmg on 

 4th March 1902, says : — " In the churchyard at Lowthorpe is 



buried Agars, for some time keeper in our family. Lord 



Lilford had a manuscript, from which he has quoted to me, 

 to the effect that Agars once killed eleven Great Bustards 

 at a shot .... this happened on the Wolds." 



This is the same incident as is referred to by Mr. J. E. 



