Return of the inglorious bustards

Once hunted to extinction due to its size and taste, the distinctly aristocratic-looking great bustard is back on Salisbury Plain, as Vicky Liddell reports

- Vicky Liddell

EVERY April for the past few years, visitors to Stonehenge have encountered a strange bird striding purposefully around the monument. Gertrude, as she has been christened by the Stonehenge staff, is a female great bustard (Otis tarda) and would once have been a familiar sight on Salisbury Plain, before the species was hunted to extinction in the 19th century. Great bustards are usually shy and wary, but not Gertrude, who is unperturbed by humans or dogs and will, after a brief visit, disappear to join the rest of her drove for the breeding season. The fact that she is here at all is thanks to the efforts of the Great Bustard Group, which —after 16 years of dedicated conservation work—has managed to establish a self-sustaining population of 100 birds living free on the Wiltshire plains.

At just over 3ft tall and weighing up to 40lb, the male great bustard is a majestic creature and the world’s heaviest flying bird, with a slightly elevated bill that lends it a distinctly aristocratic air. It has a bulging neck, a cocked tail and an 8ft wingspan. Both sexes boast black and brown barred feathers above white undercarriages and, when airborne in large droves, they make a formidable spectacle. It is thought that the great bustard started to colonise Britain in the middle of the 15th century, attracted by the open grassland and cultivated fields.