Neil MacGregor’s History of the World in 100 Objects, based on artefacts in the British Museum and broadcast on BBC Radio 4 as a series of 15 minute talks, captured the imagination of many people. The History of Charterhouse in 100 Objects is based on a similar concept, exploring the artefacts remaining in our Museum store. Object 34 has now been added to the series.
Object 34: Extinct Birds Fly Again
The Charterhouse in 100 Objects series kicks off the new School year with a pair of taxidermy birds from our museum collection, the rare Great Bustards.
These extraordinary birds have been extinct in the UK for nearly two centuries, but have recently been re-introduced and can now be seen strutting around Salisbury Plain.
Great Bustards are the heaviest flying birds in the world. The adult male is typically 90 to 105cm tall, has a wing-span of over two metres and weighs in at up to 20kg. These huge birds once roamed the chalk downlands of Southern England and the sandy Brecklands of Eastern England, but their size made them easy targets for hunters and they became extinct in the UK in 1832. Great Bustards continue to live in parts of Europe (most successfully in Spain and Russia), but they have been in decline for many years and are on the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List of endangered species.
In 2004 a small number of Great Bustards from Russia were re-introduced onto Salisbury Plain, with more birds released in subsequent years. The project is run by The Great Bustard Group, in conjunction with researchers from the University of Bath. In 2009 the Great Bustard colony laid eggs and raised chicks for the first time and it is hoped that the population will soon be self-sustaining.
Please follow the link for a recent Great Bustard report on BBC Countryfile.
Great Bustards have distinctive plumage, chestnut-brown with dark barring above, white below and with a long blue-grey neck and head. The male has splendid moustache-like whiskers and reddish feathers on the lower neck and breast. Female Great Bustards are about 30% smaller than the males (an unusually high sexual dimorphism) and they have plainer plumage.
The Charterhouse pair of Great Bustards belonged to Mr William Stafford, a Victorian taxidermist who was collecting between 1834 and 1890. The origin of our male Great Bustard is unknown, but Stafford recorded that the female was “taken in Norfolk, 20 March 1869, having been accidentally entangled in a sheep net”. Great Bustards had officially been extinct in the UK for thirty years by then, but birds from the Continent were still occasionally seen during the winter months if they flew off course across the North Sea. The Stafford collection was purchased by Charterhouse Museum in 1890 and the Great Bustards were on display in the School Bird Museum until it was converted into a computer room in 2004.
For more information please follow the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds.
