ALAMYA little bustard sighting is a rare treat
Many a sore head greeted 2015 by travelling to Fraisthorpe to see one of the most sought after rarities in birdwatching.
For those who abandoned the night before’s festivities or those that managed to cadge a lift and sleep off their excesses in a back seat, the temperance or suffering was worthwhile.
Little bustards are gracing our shores increasingly sporadically.
Although there are sizable populations in Iberia and southern France, the bulk of the 230 or so individuals that have turned up over the past few centuries hailed from Russia’s vast steppes.
These enigmatic birds with their profound sexual dimorphism, the males are decorated dandies, the females dowdy examples of cryptic camouflage, are built for a leisurely life on vast, grassy plains.
Indeed, the word bustard supposedly derives from the same root as the word “tardy”, meaning sluggish.
Strangely, little bustards have been far from slothful this winter, with long-distance stragglers arriving in their highest numbers for years.
There have been fleeting glimpses of birds in Dorset and East Sussex but those who gambled on a January 1 outing after one was found in East Yorkshire were gifted with a view, albeit somewhat obscured as the female bird hunkered down in crops.
Little bustards are gracing our shores increasingly sporadically
Josh Jones from the BirdGuides rarity news service explained how the bustard’s arrival, the first “twitchable” individual since one spent four days on The Lizard, Cornwall, in late October 1996, had made many a birder’s mind up to forego the New Year festivities.
“With two brief sightings already this winter it perhaps isn’t too surprising that a twitchable little bustard was found, though few would have predicted a New Year’s twitch in East Yorkshire,” he said.
“Yet that’s exactly what happened, with 500-plus birders gathered along a minor road near Fraisthorpe at dawn on New Year’s Day.”
There is something ironic about the way the bustard sought shelter in a field of growing kale when modern agriculture is undoubtedly the reason why little bustards are classified as “near threatened” by the International Union for Conservation of Nature.
Loss of dry grassland to intensive arable farming has impacted on male birds that prefer to perform their courtship rituals in old, same-year fallows.
Harvesting by high-speed machinery, often at night, has had an equally devastating effect on females and nests.
The loss of farmland birds across Europe is likely to be increased if threatened changes to the EU Habitats Directive by a new generation of Brussels Eurocrats come into force.
Declining bird numbers are a feature of a new report by the British Trust for Ornithology entitled BirdTrends at bto.org.
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