NATURE AND SPORT IN BRITAIN 



purely feral state, still travels occasionally across the 

 seas to revisit the ancient haunts of its forefathers in 

 England. Every few years we have notices of a wild 

 bustard, usually accompanied by the familiar corollary 

 that the grand bird has been shot. In 1890 one or two 

 were reported ; in 1891 bustards were seen in Sussex, 

 Hants, Wilts, and Norfolk. A few others have occurred 

 since, one of the last reported being one shot near 

 Market Lavington, Wiltshire, in 1897. ^ ^ s worthy 

 of note that these stragglers seem usually to visit the 

 counties in which their species was once familiar. 



In various parts of the world some thirty species of 

 bustard are to be found, of which more than twenty 

 belong to the continent of Africa. Five are almost 

 purely Asiatic, including the Bengal and Lesser Flori- 

 can and Macqueen's bustard, all of which are Indian ; 

 while two, the great and little bustard, are found alike 

 in Europe, North Africa, Central Asia, and Persia. Not 

 a single bustard is to be found in America, while Aus- 

 tralia can boast of but one example, the Otis Australia, 

 a fine bird familiar to colonial sportsmen as the " wild 

 turkey." 



In Southern Africa the bustard in various forms is 

 everywhere well known and appreciated as a sporting 

 bird, and, as a general rule, it may be said that the 

 average gunner in search of feathered game seldom, 

 if ever, fails to include in his mixed and interesting 

 day's bag some few examples of one or other of the 

 ten species to be found south of the Zambesi. 



On the open plains he will seldom be long out of 

 hearing and sight of the noisy and often troublesome 

 black koorhaan, or, if north of the Orange, of its near 

 cousin, the white-quilled black koorhaan. Koorhaan, 

 by the way, the name by which all the smaller bustards 

 are known to the English and Dutch colonists, seems 



