THE GREAT-BUSTARD 545 



Swaffham district in Norfolk, while the other ranged from the breck 

 district near Thetford to the Newmarket country. Here another local 

 cause operated against them, for in order to shelter the corn crops, 

 long belts of pine trees were planted to break the force of the wind. 

 The bustard is essentially a bird of the open country and instinctively 

 avoids woodlands, where all his caution cannot protect him from 

 unobserved approach. Up to the beginning of the nineteenth 

 century the Suffolk drove seems to have varied from thirty to forty 

 in number, but after 1812 planting became more general, and the 

 numbers rapidly declined, until at last only one or two hen-birds 

 alone remained, as was also the case with the Swaffharn drove. 



In 1900 an attempt was made to reintroduce this species to its 

 old home in the Suffolk " breck " lands, by turning out some seventeen 

 birds imported from Spain for the purpose. Unfortunately, they 

 never seem to have settled down, and several were killed soon 

 afterwards, so that the stock rapidly dwindled in numbers ; and 

 though one or two of the hens actually nested, no young are known 

 to have been reared, and by the end of 1902 only two survived, which 

 also disappeared in due course, so that the experiment came to an 

 untimely end. 



At the present time, although a certain number of these birds 

 breed annually in North Germany and the plains of Hungary, they 

 are by no means plentiful there, and the nature of the country does 

 not lend itself to observation of their habits. There are, however, 

 two great strongholds of this fine bird even now, where it is no 

 uncommon sight to meet with droves of fifteen or twenty, or even 

 more. One of these lies in South-western Europe, where it is 

 common, not only in the dreary treeless plateau of Central Spain, 

 but also in the rolling cornfields and marisma of Andalucia. The 

 other is in the basin of the Black Sea, and extends from the rich 

 plains which border the banks of the Lower Danube to Bessarabia 

 and the steppe-lands of Southern Russia. It is rather difficult to 

 define the status of this species. On the whole, it is mainly sedentarv. 



