98 GREAT BUSTARD. 



which is increased by the length of its neck. In running it carries itself like the barn- 

 door fowl. The Bustard runs with great swiftness, but if approached it is very ready 

 in taking to its wings, and flies swiftly and well, frequently for several miles. Selby 

 says that the young birds, when alarmed, squat close to the ground, like young Plovers 

 and Lapwings, and in this position are often taken by the hand. This would certainly 

 seem to militate against the old accounts of the young birds being coursed by greyhounds. 

 The male bird has a curious pouch, commencing under the tongue and running down 

 the neck, capable of holding, according to Montagu, three or four quarts of water, 

 according to others, six or seven. The use of this receptacle appears to be uncertain; 

 it is said that the bird will eject water forcibly from it in the face of its pursuer, as 

 a means of defence; others suppose it is used to carry a supply of water, to sustain it 

 in the dry and parched localities it prefers. It is, however, very doubtful whether either 

 of these suppositions is correct; the latter is improbable, for the hen is destitute of any 

 such provision. 



Meyer says that the scent and hearing of the Bustard are very defective, and that 

 if a person can hide in a ditch, or behind long herbage or brambles, near its haunt, 

 and wait the arrival of a flock, he may readily pick his bird, if he only keeps out of 

 sight. In some interesting notes on the Great Bustard, by Thomas Southwell, Esq., in 

 "The Naturalist," for March, 1852, the following unsportsmanlike destruction of nine of 

 these fine birds is thus narrated: — "The Rev. B. Lubbock, in his "Observations on the 

 Fauna of Norfolk," says that a keeper, by the name of Turner, at Wretham, about six 

 miles from Thetford, some fifty years ago, in severe weather, used to kill many Bustards 

 by looking for their tracks in the snoAV, and feeding them for a day or two with cabbages. 

 He next constructed a battery of three large Duck-guns, bearing on the spot where the 

 food lay, and secreting himself before daylight in a hole some one hundred and fifty 

 yards from the guns, by means of a long string fastened to the triggers, he effected a 

 general discharge on the first favourable opportunity; and in this way he once obtained 

 nine Bustards at one shot." Mr. Southwell mentions that the last Bustard shot in 

 Norfolk, as far as he has been able to ascertain, was a female, early in 1838, which 

 was obtained in a turnip field at Dersingham, near Lynn. 



After incubation commences the males do not associate with the females. During the 

 autumn and winter, they unite together in flocks of from five to fifteen or twenty; but 

 in some parts of the continent, where they are plentiful, from fifty to a hundred or 

 more will sometimes be found collected in one pack. 



In feeding the bill is chiefly used to detach the food; the feet being but seldom called 

 into requisition. 



The Bustard is said by some to be polygamous, but it does not appear to be known 

 in what proportion the two sexes exist. According to Meyer they pair regularly about 



