great bustard Otis tarda bustards GBG Great Bustard Group Otididae reintroduction Salisbury Plain
tetrapodzoology | April 6, 2010Over the weekend I and a bunch of friends and colleagues (representing the Southampton Natural History Society) went to Salisbury Plain, Wiltshire, in search of Great bustards Otis tarda.
The Great bustard (one of 26 or so bustard species found throughout the Old World and Australasia) is a British native, but excessive hunting and (probably) changing agricultural practises, increasing human disturbance and perhaps other factors led to its extinction as a breeding species round about 1832, though some eggs were apparently discovered in 1838 and it is suspected that some native birds were…