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.
Denne historien er fra May 26, 2021-utgaven av Country Life UK.
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Denne historien er fra May 26, 2021-utgaven av Country Life UK.
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Save our family farms
IT Tremains to be seen whether the Government will listen to the more than 20,000 farming people who thronged Whitehall in central London on November 19 to protest against changes to inheritance tax that could destroy countless family farms, but the impact of the good-hearted, sombre crowds was immediate and positive.
A very good dog
THE Spanish Pointer (1766–68) by Stubbs, a landmark painting in that it is the artist’s first depiction of a dog, has only been exhibited once in the 250 years since it was painted.
The great astral sneeze
Aurora Borealis, linked to celestial reindeer, firefoxes and assassinations, is one of Nature's most mesmerising, if fickle displays and has made headlines this year. Harry Pearson finds out why
'What a good boy am I'
We think of them as the stuff of childhood, but nursery rhymes such as Little Jack Horner tell tales of decidedly adult carryings-on, discovers Ian Morton
Forever a chorister
The music-and way of living-of the cabaret performer Kit Hesketh-Harvey was rooted in his upbringing as a cathedral chorister, as his sister, Sarah Sands, discovered after his death
Best of British
In this collection of short (5,000-6,000-word) pen portraits, writes the author, 'I wanted to present a number of \"Great British Commanders\" as individuals; not because I am a devotee of the \"great man, or woman, school of history\", but simply because the task is interesting.' It is, and so are Michael Clarke's choices.
Old habits die hard
Once an antique dealer, always an antique dealer, even well into retirement age, as a crop of interesting sales past and future proves
It takes the biscuit
Biscuit tins, with their whimsical shapes and delightful motifs, spark nostalgic memories of grandmother's sweet tea, but they are a remarkably recent invention. Matthew Dennison pays tribute to the ingenious Victorians who devised them
It's always darkest before the dawn
After witnessing a particularly lacklustre and insipid dawn on a leaden November day, John Lewis-Stempel takes solace in the fleeting appearance of a rare black fox and a kestrel in hot pursuit of a pipistrelle bat
Tarrying in the mulberry shade
On a visit to the Gainsborough Museum in Sudbury, Suffolk, in August, I lost my husband for half an hour and began to get nervous. Fortunately, an attendant had spotted him vanishing under the cloak of the old mulberry tree in the garden.
