CHAPTER IX. 
THE GREAT BUSTARD 
(Otis tarda). 
“ Save that the Bustard, of those regions bleak 
Shy tenant, seeing by the uncertain light 
A man there wandering, gave a mournful shriek, 
And half upon the ground, with strange affright, 
Forced hard against the wind a thick unwieldy flight.” 
Wordsworth. 
“ The big-boan’d Bustard then, whose body beares that size, 
That he against the wind must runne, ere he can rise.” 
Drayton. 
The European representative of the Ostrich is the 
Great Bustard,—a noble, powerful bird of handsome 
plumage. It is a well-known inhabitant of extensive 
plains, and in many localities is regarded by agriculturists 
as a noxious bird, and justly so. Besides inhabiting 
Germany, it is also found distributed over the greater 
part of the southern and eastern portion of our continent, 
Central Asia, and North-western Africa. It stands alone 
in Central Europe, with the exception of another smaller, 
but somewhat allied, species,—the Little Bustard (Otis 
tetrax). Other members of the family are much more 
common in Africa, where there is scarcely any extensive 
and desert plain on which some one or other species 
does not occur; and these are localities where Bustards 
