360 " Recent Occurrence of the Great Bustard in Wilts. 33 



when quite a large body came over : by some said to have been 

 frightened away from France, owing" to the heavy firing during the 

 Franco- German war; by others, and with more probability, con- 

 jectured to have been driven from their usual haunts by an exception- 

 ally cold winter. Whether this body arrived in detachments, or 

 whether they came in one large pack, is uncertain ; but if the latter 

 they must very soon have dispersed over a considerable area, for 

 some were obtained in Devonshire, some in Somerset, some in 

 Middlesex, some in Northumberland, and no less than seven found 

 their way to Salisbury Plain, to the parishes of Maddington, 

 Shrewton, Market Lavington, and Berwick St. James, as I have 

 fully detailed elsewhere (Birds of Wiltshire, p. 361). 



Previous to this immigration of Great Bustards into Wiltshire 

 none had been seen in the county for fifteen years, and then but a 

 single bird was observed and captured in the neighbourhood of 

 Hungerford, in the early part of January, 1856, of which I have 

 also given particulars (Birds of Wiltshire, p. 358). 



Since 1871 there have been occasional stragglers in various parts 

 of England, notably in the winter of 1879-80, when nine specimens 

 were captured, viz., one in Essex, two in Jersey, one in Cornwall, 

 three in Kent, one in Cambridgeshire, and one in Dorset, the greater 

 part of which were recorded to be females, and one only pronounced 

 to be a male : but none of these were observed in Wilts. Between 

 1880 and the beginning of the present winter I am not aware that 

 the Great Bustard has put in any appearance within the British 

 Isles : but now, during the remarkably cold weather which we have 

 experienced this winter, and which seems to have extended pretty 

 generally over the Continent of Europe, another arrival of Great 

 Bustards has taken place, and no less than seven specimens have 

 been taken in as many counties : for they, too, if they came over in 

 a body, as is probable, very soon scattered over the country, and 

 between December 20th and February 7th a single individual of 

 this fine species has been taken in Essex, in' Carmarthenshire, in 

 Hampshire, in Sussex, in Norfolk, in Suffolk, as well as in Wilts, as 

 has been fully reported by Mr. Harting in the Zoologist and in the 

 Field. They were all females, not a male bird amongst them, and 



