4 
GREAT BUSTARD. 
of forty or fifty feet, and then, after a few rapid strokes, sail 
away. When flushed they perform flights of two miles or 
more without difficulty, at a height of about a hundred yards, 
and their migrations testify that they are capable of much 
more extended peregrinations. The^y do not run to escape 
danger. The wings are not closed immediately on alighting. 
Graminivorous birds, they feed on grasses, clover, turnip 
tops, and various vegetables, corn, barle\ r , both the ears and 
leaves, and other grain, and beetles; Rennie adds worms, frogs, 
mice, and young birds to the catalogue: small stones are 
swallowed to grind up the food. The young are fed with insects. 
The bare earth is laid upon. ‘It is said that the Great 
Bustard will forsake her nest, if only once driven from it by 
apprehension of danger; but when the eggs are laid, and still 
more when the young are produced, it is only repeated meddling 
with them that will induce the parents to forsake them. 5 
The eggs, two in number, are of an olive brown colour, blotted 
with pale ferruginous and ash-coloured spots. 
Male; weight, as much as twenty-eight or thirty pounds; 
length, three feet nine inches; bill, brown; iris, reddish brown. 
Head on the centre of the crown, chesnut, variegated with 
black, on the sides, white; neck on the back, light greyish, 
on the sides, white; about the shoulders a soft grey down takes 
the place of feathers; nape, pale chesnut, barred with black; 
chin, white; underneath it a plume of narrow feathers about 
seven inches long falls backward, partly covering a strip of 
bluish grey skin on the front and sides of the neck; throat 
above, white, below, pale chesnut orange, as is the upper part 
of the breast, which then below is white; the feathers have a 
pink tinge at the base; back, pale chesnut orange, barred and 
variegated with black; the base of these feathers also is of a 
delicate rose tint. 
The wings have the first quill feather shorter than the second, 
the second shorter than the third and fourth, which are the 
longest in the wing; they extend to as much, in the fullest- 
sized birds, as seven feet three inches; greater and lesser wing 
coverts, partly white and partly chesnut brown, barred with 
black; primaries, brownish black, the shafts white; secondaries, 
greyish white; tertiaries, chesnut brown, barred with black. 
The tail, rounded at the end, and of twenty feathers, is white 
at the base, then pale chesnut, tipped with white and barred 
with black, the two outer feathers greyish white, almost pure 
white at the base, with two or three small bars of black, near 
