Personal Blogs

My cousin took this picture of a young male Great Bustard.

These birds are amongst the heaviest flying birds, possibly the heaviest. An adult male may be a metre tall, have a wing span of 2+ metres, and weigh in at up to about 20 kg.

The bird is classified as vulnerable; although it is widespread only about 40,000 survive. It lives on open grasslands and once had a British population, but was hunted to extinction in this country by the middle of the 19th century.

However the bird has been successfully reintroduced, from 2007 I believe, and there is now a breeding population of about 40. My cousin has been watching one of them and was able to get this shot, I presume of its offspring.

You can read more about the reintroduction programme here and here is an image from the same site.