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......
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Phil demonstrating the willow
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| Willow weaving workshop |
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| Rillington School Willow Weaving |
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Bustard 1 moved into position
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Bustards 2 moved into position
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Great Bustards in the woodland garden
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| Bustards at the Palladian Bridge - as they were in the 1891 photo.... |
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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.
