GREAT BUSTARD. 211 



The Bustard is generally supposed to be polygamous, aud 

 even those who oppose this belief, cannot deny that in num- 

 bers the females are far in excess of the males. In spring 

 the males fight furiously for the possession of the females, 

 and at Elveden a shepherd, prior to 1820, saw two cock 

 birds so intent on the combat that he ran up and killed one 

 with his staff. The males afterwards live apart from the 

 females, forming small flocks by themselves. The female 

 deposits her eggs in a mere scratching in the ground : in 

 April, in Spain ; in May, further north ; the complement is 

 two or three, and the exceptional clutches of four and five 

 which have occasionally been found, were probably the pro- 

 duce of two females. The eggs are olive-brown in colour, 

 sparingly and indistinctly blotched with greenish broccoli- 

 brown ; they measure about 3 in. by 2-1 in. Incubation 

 lasts rather more than three weeks, aud the young are soon 

 able to run and secrete themselves. 



The birds feed on green corn, grasses, trefoil, and other 

 vegetables ; they also kill and eat small mammals, and, 

 perhaps, small reptiles. In the summer they conceal them- 

 selves in standing corn, generally wheat or rye, and later in 

 the season in large fields of high turnips ; they also frequent 

 chalk-pits when they are partly overgrown with bushes or 

 rank vegetation. 



In the autumn, so far as East Anglia was concerned, the 

 Bustards used to disappear for a time, and Mr. Stevenson 

 remarks that there is positively no precise information re- 

 specting their appearance during the months of October and 

 November. 



The flesh of the old male is very coarse eating, but that 

 of a fat hen or of a young bird is excellent. During the 

 great heat of August and September, young birds are some- 

 times run down by horsemen and dogs in Spain, as after two 

 or three low flights they become exhausted, being at that 

 season extremely fat. That they have been captured under 

 similar circumstances in England is probable, and indeed 

 one case is recorded by Mr. Lubbock where the greyhounds 

 came suddenly through a gate, and " chopped " a Bustard ;. 



