Al Dawes, project officer of the Great Bustard Group, treated members to a presentation on ‘The return of the Great Bustard’.  Many readers will know that this project, based on Salisbury Plain, was set up recently with the aim of bringing the Great Bustard back to the UK.
    Great Bustards are the world’s heaviest flying birds; the male with a wingspan of 2.5 m can weigh 20 kg or more. They are very much part of our culture – a Great Bustard features on the Wiltshire county coat of arms. Yet, once widespread in Britain, they became extinct here early in the 19th century largely through trophy hunting.  Indeed, the global population is in serious decline, and so the Great Bustard Group has an important role to play in protecting this magnificent bird and, hopefully, enabling numbers to grow.  Salisbury Plain with its expanses of chalk grassland, little changed for generations, largely thanks to the military presence, is an ideal place to reintroduce the birds.
    We learned how eggs from Russia, home to one of the world’s largest populations of Great Bustards (though threatened by intensive very large scale agriculture) are artificially incubated,

and some of the chicks brought to the UK to raise until old enough to be released into the wild.  The first release took place in 2004 and annual releases are scheduled for the next ten years.  Great Bustards are very secretive and difficult to track.  But a wealth of slides along with a sound recording of a startled bird, plus lively descriptions of their behaviour given by a speaker with an infectious enthusiasm for his subject, gave the audience a unique insight into the life and behaviour of this bird. 
The Great Bustard Group depends largely on volunteer help and charitable donations.  But its work is internationally renowned, with co-operation with the Russian Academy of Science and the Universities of Bath and Exeter.  To find out more, and to arrange a visit to the project go to www.greatbustard.com.