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Great Bustard Chicks Hatched in UK
No I’m not using bad language, the first Great Bustard chicks for 177 years have hatched in the UK wild in Salisbury Plain … woohooo (claps hands with delight).
There have been sightings of a female with two chicks and another female with a single chick.
Great Bustards have a sad in the UK with the last recorded breeding in Suffolk in 1832 and then extinction from our landscape.
Changes to agricultural practices and a reduction in habitit saw this once wide spread bird totally disappear from the UK, with only an occasional visitor stopping in from abroad.
Then in 1998 David Waters took up the torch and founded the Great Bustard Group, working hard to try to re-introduce these magnificent birds to the UK.
Salisbury Plain is Ministry of Defence land and only really used for military training, so has changed very little without modern agricultural techniques changing the landscape .. that makes it perfect for the re-introduction.
Since 2004 about 80 Bustards have been released on the Plain.
As you can see from the GBG website the first link on the top left is written in Russian, this is because the Bustard eggs are obtained from nests on Russian farms and flown to the UK.
The eggs are hatched and birds are then left to grow in an enclosure until they are ready to fly away.
The new hatchings however are the result of breeding in the UK, the first big step in the birds re-introduction.
The next mammoth step is for these chicks to grow and breed themselves.
GBG is a registered charity and in desperate need of replacing one of their land rovers, please pop over and drop a couple of quid in the coffers by way of a and help this project stay alive until the UK is once again a safe home for the Great Bustard .. if you do I’ll let you see a piccy of the cute litte chicks!!
They also have a little shop on their website, go on be organised and grab a couple of early stocking fillers like the Filthy Bustard Soap or their Greedy Bustard Chocolate .. oh go on, it would be worth it just to see grannies face when she opens it.
My deepest thanks to David Waters and his helpers for this brilliant project and their hard work at trying to bring back such a beautiful bird to our landscapes, also to the sponsons for making it possible for the project to stay afloat.
Oh go on then, I’m just so excited but just a quick peek ..
I admit it, I pinched the above photo’s from the website but as I’m telling you all to give them a donation, visit their online shop or project I hope they won’t mind.
June 4th, 2009 at 6:03 pm
A great story and a worthy cause. It is great to see organisations and charities trying to repair some of the damage caused by the changes us humans make to the environment and landscapes that cause these kind of extinctions.
I’m sure they will be most grateful for your help in plugging their cause!
June 5th, 2009 at 10:41 am
Hi Sally, its a good thing they are doing to increase the Great Bustard numbers. Salisbury Plain is a great place to watch wildlife especially birds and as you say is unchanged over many years. I have spent more days and nights than I care to remember on the place, but it was a consolation to see all the different bird species, but I didn’t get to see the GB’s unfortunately.
Roy Norris’s last blog post..
June 5th, 2009 at 8:28 pm
Well I hope you will get out there some time and get some good photo’s to share with us Roy, they are such beautiful birds.