112 St. Quintin : Some AviciiUural Notes. 



female was sitting. He spent most of his time in a distant 

 corner of the paddock, occasionally dropping his wings, and 

 inflating his pouch, till he began to moult. In the wild state, 

 the hen birds in the early summer leave the males, and go off 

 to the standing crops to lay, and the sexes live apart till the 

 autumn. When two male Bustards fight, they spar awhile, 

 and then grasp each other's beaks, and push and pull until 

 one gives way, and runs. I have never known Bustards do 

 •each other any serious harm. 



Although we had no data to go upon, I expected that a 

 month might be the period of incubation, as with the Cranes ; 

 and on the twenty-eighth day the female rushed out at my 

 man from the long grass, but from a place a little away from 

 the nest ; and on searching where she came from, he found a 

 young bird, standing but with closed eyes and very weak. 

 It was unluckily most extremel}^ cold and wet, and the con- 

 ditions could not have been more unfavourable. The little 

 bird never was seen to feed, and was found dead the same 

 evening. I lost the mother bird that autumn through a chill, 

 and have never been so near success since that date. Still 

 I have a hen that lays regularly, and sometimes incubates ; 

 and I have by no means given up all hope of bringing olf what 

 would be rather an avicultural triumph. 



I have seen nothing which supports the statement copied 

 by one author from another, that the bird sheds its primaries 

 altogether, like the Waterfowl, and some other birds; and that 

 it is flightless until these feathers grow again. 



The story ran that at that time the adults used to be taken 

 by greyhounds. I believe this is an entire fable. At any rate, 

 with my birds the moult of the quills is a prolonged business, 

 and goes on simultaneously with the change of the other 

 plumage during the late summer and autumn months. 



Neither can the bird run exceptionally fast. Its usual pace 

 is a stately walk, often a strut. No doubt a winged Great 

 Bustard would flap along, like a wounded wild goose, for a few 

 hundred -yards ; but any dog or an active man would, I should 

 expect, run it down if he could keep it in sight. 



I am sorry that my name should be in any way associated 

 with the extermination of our old Yorkshire race of Great 

 Bustards, but I fear I can't gainsay the story told in Mr. Nelson's 

 ■* Birds of Yorkshire,' published by the Yorkshire Naturalists' 

 Union, that a gamekeeper in the employ of my family in 1806 



Naturalist 



