Great Bustards return to Scampston

On Weds 18th June willow weaver Phil Bradley came along to Scampston to run a willow design workshop with children from Rillington school.  The whole project was inspired by the story of the Great Bustard at Scampston. Photos of the day and a summary of the history of the Great Bustard at Scampston  below......

Phil demonstrating the willow

Willow weaving workshop

Rillington School Willow Weaving

Bustard 1  moved into position

Bustards 2 moved into position

Great Bustards in the woodland garden

Bustards at the Palladian Bridge - as they were in  the 1891 photo....

Heritage Learning Officer with Bustards
All photos thanks to Callaghan Photography

Visitors to Scampston gardens and parkland can now be inspired by them  as part of the parkland interpretation...

W H St Quintin and Great Bustards - A TALE OF A BIG BIRD...

The ups and downs of the Great Bustard  by 

Mike Brookes -  Scampston Heritage Volunteer

W H and his birds

A renowned ornithologist, ‘W H’ St Quintin (1851-1933) kept a collection of Great Bustards in a quarter-acre enclosure here between 1886 and 1909.  They were supervised by Arthur Moody, his falconer and ‘bird keeper’.

A giant of a bird!

Weighing up to 16 kilograms, the Great Bustard is Europe’s heaviest wild bird.  It is however very shy and usually occupies wide, open areas in order to spot danger from afar.  In Spain, the Bustard is also found amongst groves of trees, as in the enclosure here at Scampston.

Scared to death...

Being so nervous, the Bustards had to be protected against the risk of a sudden fright.  Unfortunately one bird kept here by W H for 13 years went into a panic at the sight of a gardener with a broom on his shoulder.  It broke a wing bone, opened up an artery and bled to death in minutes.

The hunt for the Bustard

W H was always on the lookout for Great Bustards for his collection. In 1884 he obtained one from a London dealer in wild animals.  Sadly, the poor bird arrived in a hamper at Scampston with a missing wing and both legs broken.  Eventually, W H’s friend Lord Lilford sent him Great Bustards from his collection in Northamptonshire.  In 1897, he arranged for the shipment of ten Great and six Little Bustards to London from Seville at a cost of £25. In 1905 W H wrote that he had been a offered a pair of Great Bustards by his London dealer, but had to refuse them as he was unable to attend to them that year.

Baby bustards?

W H had mixed success in breeding his Bustards.  The first Great Bustard chick hatched in 1901, but sadly died the same day.  In 1908 he had a Little Bustard sitting on eggs which failed to hatch.  In 1916 however, a Little Bustard was successful in breeding.

A tale of two pals and their bustards

W H’s lifelong friend from Eton, Edmund Meade-Waldo, was also a naturalist who travelled abroad extensively in search of Great Bustards.  In 1901 he wrote to W H about his meeting with two Austrian counts with Bustards on their properties, including useful details about their breeding behaviour.  In 1889 he also provided W H with an interesting account of his Houbara Bustard’s display behaviour (which is similar to that of the Great Bustard):

‘He displays in the most extraordinary manner though only half-grown. I can only describe it by saying he turns himself inside out and then ties himself into a knot’.

Edmund goes on to include details of his bird’s diet (again, similar to that of a Great Bustard):

‘...cabbage, locusts, lizards. Grapes, meal, wheat, all seeds, salt, humble bees - anything...

And other behaviour:

  [They] make a low noise like otis tarda [Great Bustard]. Also a loud bark. They will chase a dog.’

A sad irony

Nelson’s Birds of Yorkshire records that in 1806 a St. Quintin gamekeeper killed eleven wild bustards with one shot on the Wolds, thereby possibly contributing to their extinction in the United Kingdom in 1832.  Today, wild Great Bustards range from Iberia through Eastern Europe and the Russian steppes as far as China, but their populations are scattered and their numbers have been reduced by agricultural practices.  Currently the Great Bustard Group is attempting to reintroduce the bird to the UK in Wiltshire.