10 
THE GREAT BUSTARD. 
OggSjHE last dwelling place of the great bustard or Otis tarda 
KhkH believed to have been the fen region of Norfolk, 
though one was killed on Salisbury Plain during the 
Franco-German War, and is now preserved in the 
Blackmore Museum, at Salisbury. An ingenious way of 
destroying a bird which, according to Gilbert White, would 
hardly allow a human being to come within three or four 
furlongs of it, was to bait a spot within range of a battery of 
shot guns. Strings were fastened to the triggers, and the guns 
were fired by pulling the strings as soon as the birds were busily 
at work eating the tempting but dangerous bait. The great 
bustard was for centuries fairly plentiful in many parts of 
England and of South-east Scotland, but its large size, the 
absence of cover on the bare plains it frequented, and its 
reputation at table, made its destruction easy, and, with the 
growth of population, only too certain. The little bustard, a 
much smaller bird, is common in Southern Europe and Northern 
Africa, but is very rarely seen in England, and then invariably 
in winter. 
Newmarket Heath, Salisbury Plain, the South Downs, and 
Royston Heath, were all well-known dwelling-places of the great 
bustard, and Devon, Wilts, Norfolk and Suffolk, Lincolnshire 
and Cambridgeshire, were all at times visited by it. Mr. Yarrell 
mentions that, as late as 1819, nineteen were seen together in 
Norfolk, at Westcape, and were carefully protected by the 
proprietor. Sir Robert Sibbald records that they were occasion- 
ally seen in Scotland. He adds that unam non ita pridem in 
Lothiana Orientali visam fuisse. Mr. William Young, of Borough- 
head, shot one in Morayshire in 1803, and Mr. Mudie, in his 
“ British Birds,” mentions that he saw two birds in the parish 
of Carmyllie, in Forfarshire, which he had no doubt were 
bustards, but they were seen in the early morning, at a distance 
of a quarter of a mile, and he might have been deceived as to 
the species. Mr. Thompson says they have long been extinct 
in Ireland, though Smith enumerated them in 1749 among the 
birds of Cork. The bustard was sometimes on sale in the 
poulterers’ shops of the Palais Royal, and £1 to £\ were asked 
lor it. It is said still to be found on the plains of Spain, Italy 
and Greece. 
“The great bustard, like the crane,” says Mr. J. C. Mansel- 
Pleydell in his “ Birds of Dorset,” “ was also a resident at no 
very remote epoch in Great Britain.” Pulteney, writing in 
1813, says : “The bustard is now becoming very scarce even 
m Wiltshire ; a few stragglers make their appearance now and 
then about Woodyates and Ashmore Downs ; single birds have 
been killed in Langton parish, in Sludland, and elsewhere.” 
The late Sir William Oglander is said to have shot three on the 
