Good news! #GreatBustards found breeding in new location

by Peter Davison, January 24, 2026

"Great bustard nests have been found for the first time on #CranborneChase.

"This week, Cranborne Chase Landscape Trust confirmed that bustard chicks had been found in the designated National Landscape last May.

"The #bustard - the world's heaviest flying bird - was hunted to extinction in the 19th century, but the species was secretly reintroduced to #Wiltshire in 1998 using chicks from Russia.

"The two new nests were found in a field of sainfoin north of the Wylyle Valley, after a farmer informed the Great Bustard Group (#GBG) that he was about to start mowing a crop.

"Since 2004, the GBG has released hundreds of chicks on #SalisburyPlain in Wiltshire.

"As a precaution, two volunteers used drones funded by the government-backed Farming in Protected Landscapes programme to check the field.

"The eggs were rescued under licence, incubated and hand-reared. The birds have since been released back onto nearby Salisbury Plain.

"The trust released a drone image of a bustard sitting on its nest, camouflaged amongst the tall crop.

" 'What it shows is the slow, but steady, expansion of the breeding range of the great bustard - and that the bustards had a good year last year,' said David Waters from the GBG.

"The bird has been Wiltshire's county emblem since Wiltshire Council was established in 2009.

"Speaking to BBC Radio Wiltshire, Waters said the UK population, which is all in Wiltshire, are doing well.

" 'The numbers are going up slowly. But in the rest of the world, many of the Great Bustard species are not doing well,' he added.

" 'They're the only bird in the UK which is globally endangered.' "

Source:
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx2ygrn24w4o

Archived version:
https://archive.ph/tRhXw

#SolarPunkSunday #Nature #Wildlife #EndangeredSpecies

One of the reasons I was in the South West was chasing some family history. I've been annoyed that I hadn't researched this branch at the time I lived in Wiltshire for a couple of years, so I never visited the places, so I decided to take a trip.

This is the village, situated on Cranborne Chase, where my great-great-grandmother was born (and her mother, and previous generations). They left after her father, a farm worker, died, and ended up on the Isle of Wight.

The first thing I found was a lovely community shop that sold me a cup of tea, and then a poke around revealed some of the older secrets: the 17th Century Bennett Arms pub; the village pound (a medieval enclosure for holding stray animals); and, most uniquely, the plague stone - originally the base of a medieval stone cross, later used as a boundary marker, and then to place supplies for the plague-stricken neighbouring village in 1665.

#Wiltshire #History #FamilyHistory #Genealogy #17thCentury #CranborneChase