BUSTARDS 



them. The gamekeeper, who had thus wantonly 

 destroyed two birds, which he must have known from 

 their appearance were certainly rare and probably 

 sporting birds, was fined the full penalty of £i and 

 costs in each instance for killing game out of season. 

 Considering the notices which had been distributed 

 and the common report of the countryside, it is difficult 

 to conceive that the man did not perfectly well know 

 that these bustards, the larger of which he shot stand- 

 ing in a field of peas, were of a protected species. 

 By this time, I believe, this interesting experiment has 

 ended in failure. The bustards have not bred, and the 

 remnant — if any now remain — must, I am afraid, be a 

 very small one. England is, in fact, at the present day 

 too densely populated and too full of irresponsible and 

 unthinking gunners, who shoot at every rare bird they 

 see, to make it possible to conduct successfully so nice 

 and so difficult an operation as the reintroduction of 

 this magnificent game-bird. It is a thousand pities. 



It is somewhat remarkable that although bustards were 

 once familiar enough objects on the wilder and more 

 open of our English plains, heaths, downs, and uplands, 

 they have never been included among the birds of Ire- 

 land. Smith, it is true, in his Birds of Cork, published 

 in 1750, does make mention of this species, but his 

 assertion has, for what naturalists have considered good 

 and sufficient reasons, hitherto been disregarded. How- 

 ever, in the year 1902 there happened an event which 

 seems to show that Mr. Smith may, after all, have 

 been wronged. In December of that year two large 

 birds were seen frequenting some fields near Thurles, 

 county Tipperary, one of which was winged and 

 secured by a farmer's son. This proved to be a female 

 of the great bustard in fine plumage. Although thus 

 rare in the sister island, the great bustard, in the 



115 



