![]() ![]() “The grand ambition was that they would move out from the Salisbury Plain, become self-sustaining, and I'm not sure that they have. “They need these big flatlands to live and breathe and we don't really have those any more. “Bustard reintroduction felt like low hanging fruit because they have been found in our fossil record and they were persecuted and eaten to extinction," Jamie Dunning, an ornithologist at Imperial College London, told the Telegraph. A reintroduction project, founded in 2004, has been trying to bring the bird back to England, with limited success. ![]() ![]() Gertrude’s species is native to Britain but was hunted to extinction almost 200 years ago. She is thought to have sexually imprinted on the people who raised her as part of the Great Bustard Project instead of her own species, which has led to her trying to mate with humans instead of other birds. Venture to the Salisbury Plain in the height of spring, and you may be lucky enough to catch the marvellous display of great bustards strutting their stuff in search of a mate.īut as her fellow females gather to critique the elaborate courtship rituals of their potential partners, one lonely bird, Gertrude, will make her own journey to Stonehenge looking for a different type of mate - a human.Įxperts have said that Gertrude the great bustard is an example of when rewilding and reintroducing species back into a habitat does not quite go to plan. ![]()
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