As regular readers will be aware, I am a fan of Sharon Stiteler over on the Birdchick blog. A few weeks ago she had a competition for guest blogger, and I entered the following piece culled from my 2004 book Monster Hunter. It didn't win, but I thought you guys might enjoy it...
When I was a little boy, in about 1964, my Grandfather used to take me to Salisbury Museum, to see the animals. In the foyer was a stuffed family of great bustards - enormous game birds the size of a turkey which had once lived on Salisbury Plain, but which had been hunted to extinction by the early 20th century. Grandad told me how a charitable trust had been formed to try and reintroduce these magnificent birds to the area. Sadly, this remarkable project had been a signal failure. However, at the time when I visited the museum first during the cold winter of 1963, the project looked as if it was going to be able to succeed, and I remember putting my pocket money, eagerly, into a collecting box for the project and daydreaming happily about the day when these glorious fowl would once again flying over the chalky downs and grassy hummocks of Salisbury Plain. Over 20 years later I am fairly sure that my childhood dream came true.
On this particular occasion, during the early summer of 1997, at the utter end of my mis-spent youth, my friend Richard Dawe and I was driving home to Exeter after selling a boxful of Led Zeppelin bootlegs at a Record Fair in Salisbury. and were driving back along the A303 past Stonehenge with nearly 200 quid nestling in my denim jacket pocket. In 1987 200 quid was quite a lot of money and we were feeling quite pleased with ourselves. I was mentally spending our profits when Richard suddenly grabbed my arm and shouted "What the heck was that??". He was pointing at the sky in front of us where a huge bird could be seen flapping along in an ungainly manner. To this day I am convinced that it was a great bustard. But how did it get there? The only successful breeding project had finally petered out many years before, and the birds had been sent off to a zoo. Conveniently ignoring the fact that I had promised to get back to Exeter in time to collect my wife from work, I explained to Richard how exciting this sighting could turn out to be and we determined to try and follow the bird to wherever it was going.
This was not such a daft endeavour as it might sound. The bird was very large, and was flying very slowly. Just to the west of Stonehenge there is a small coppice. Suddenly the great bird flew off towards the right hand side off the road and flew over the little wood. Just beyond the wood there is a little roundabout. Doing my best to emulate one of the heroes of Starsky and Hutch, I threw the little car up at the right hand exit and careered up the bumpy road in pursuit of the giant bird. We drove for miles, aghast at the stamina of the great fowl which fluttered in an ungraceful and unlovely manner but never seemed either to tire or to make any attempt at a landing. By this time we were so engrossed in our chase that we didn't realise how far we had strayed from our original route. Salisbury Plain is criss-crossed with trackways which lead for miles across the chalky terrain. Many of them are reasonably easy to drive along, and so when it was no longer possible to follow our quarry along the Orthodox roads, we left the road and drove as fast as we could along one of the chalk track ways. I have always thought that Salisbury Plain is one of the most beautiful parts of Britain. Brown hares ran across the path in front of us as we careered along. The little chalk track was fringed by foxgloves and yellow toadflax. Wild orchids grew along the verge, and every few miles, wherever there was a slight hillock, it was surmounted by a small green wig of tatty undergrowth from which, occasionally, a fallow deer could be seen furtively peeking out from between the bushes.
Still the great bird flew on. Still we drove on after it, quite oblivious of the Red Flag which designated an army firing range. It was only when we drove round a particularly steep bend in the track and found ourselves confronted by two armoured cars and a bevy of men wearing battle dress and brandishing machine-guns that I realised quite how much trouble we were in. "Oh crap", I said.
With regret I stopped the car and watched our quarry flap a way out of sight. As the soldiers glared at us I got out of the car to apologise. A fierce looking military policeman came up to us and demanded to know who we were and what we were doing. As I started to try and explain about the great bustard I realised how unlikely it sounded. The military policeman demanded to look in the boot of the car. As I opened it I remembered that not only did it contain nearly 1000 illegal cassette tapes but it was also that temporary home for two plastic machine guns - from a fancy dress party that we had attended a few weeks before - and a human skull wrapped in a plastic bin bag. I had found the skull in a pile of remnants from the days when the hospital where I worked had been used for teaching purposes. It had no doubt once belonged to a pauper who had died intestate in the old poorhouse and who, having no goods or chatels to repossess had ended up having his or her very body taken over by an uncaring state. A century after the long-forgotten pauper had died, his or her skull had found itself in a skip awaiting removal to the incinerator. After checking with that the powers that be I had taken possession of the skull, meaning to keep it as a memento morii, put it into the boot of my car, and promptly forgot about it. I gasped, and half-a-dozen soldiers raised their weapons and pointed them at Richard and me. I continued to bluster on about great bustards, until the grim looking military policeman threatened to arrest us if I didn't shut up.
Britain is probably the only country in the world where I could have got away with anything as stupid as this. Anywhere else in the world I would have certainly been arrested, charged, tried for treason and probably ended up in a secure mental hospital somewhere far beyond the reach of Amnesty International, and where I would probably have spent the rest of my days, and furthermore I would have been the only person there who wasn't sane. As it was, even at the height of the Cold War, British justice and common sense prevailed, and after confiscating the plastic machine guns, and giving us the worst dressing-down I have ever received, they accepted my story about the great bustard and let us go.
Sadly, the identity of the great bird that we had been following and which had nearly got us shot, remains a mystery. However, over the last decade and a half I have been collecting material about the great bustard project. Because, even now, people still occasionally see these birds, it is tempting to theorise that the ill-fated project was more successful than those in charge of it had thought. Because so much of Salisbury Plain is set over for use by the military, if there are indeed small numbers of these magnificent fowl still living there, it is the British Army who has provided a mechanism for their survival. It would be sad if a by-product of the downscaling of the British military in the wake of the end of the Cold War was the final, ignominious extinction of these beautiful and exotic creatures.
When I was a little boy, in about 1964, my Grandfather used to take me to Salisbury Museum, to see the animals. In the foyer was a stuffed family of great bustards - enormous game birds the size of a turkey which had once lived on Salisbury Plain, but which had been hunted to extinction by the early 20th century. Grandad told me how a charitable trust had been formed to try and reintroduce these magnificent birds to the area. Sadly, this remarkable project had been a signal failure. However, at the time when I visited the museum first during the cold winter of 1963, the project looked as if it was going to be able to succeed, and I remember putting my pocket money, eagerly, into a collecting box for the project and daydreaming happily about the day when these glorious fowl would once again flying over the chalky downs and grassy hummocks of Salisbury Plain. Over 20 years later I am fairly sure that my childhood dream came true.
On this particular occasion, during the early summer of 1997, at the utter end of my mis-spent youth, my friend Richard Dawe and I was driving home to Exeter after selling a boxful of Led Zeppelin bootlegs at a Record Fair in Salisbury. and were driving back along the A303 past Stonehenge with nearly 200 quid nestling in my denim jacket pocket. In 1987 200 quid was quite a lot of money and we were feeling quite pleased with ourselves. I was mentally spending our profits when Richard suddenly grabbed my arm and shouted "What the heck was that??". He was pointing at the sky in front of us where a huge bird could be seen flapping along in an ungainly manner. To this day I am convinced that it was a great bustard. But how did it get there? The only successful breeding project had finally petered out many years before, and the birds had been sent off to a zoo. Conveniently ignoring the fact that I had promised to get back to Exeter in time to collect my wife from work, I explained to Richard how exciting this sighting could turn out to be and we determined to try and follow the bird to wherever it was going.
This was not such a daft endeavour as it might sound. The bird was very large, and was flying very slowly. Just to the west of Stonehenge there is a small coppice. Suddenly the great bird flew off towards the right hand side off the road and flew over the little wood. Just beyond the wood there is a little roundabout. Doing my best to emulate one of the heroes of Starsky and Hutch, I threw the little car up at the right hand exit and careered up the bumpy road in pursuit of the giant bird. We drove for miles, aghast at the stamina of the great fowl which fluttered in an ungraceful and unlovely manner but never seemed either to tire or to make any attempt at a landing. By this time we were so engrossed in our chase that we didn't realise how far we had strayed from our original route. Salisbury Plain is criss-crossed with trackways which lead for miles across the chalky terrain. Many of them are reasonably easy to drive along, and so when it was no longer possible to follow our quarry along the Orthodox roads, we left the road and drove as fast as we could along one of the chalk track ways. I have always thought that Salisbury Plain is one of the most beautiful parts of Britain. Brown hares ran across the path in front of us as we careered along. The little chalk track was fringed by foxgloves and yellow toadflax. Wild orchids grew along the verge, and every few miles, wherever there was a slight hillock, it was surmounted by a small green wig of tatty undergrowth from which, occasionally, a fallow deer could be seen furtively peeking out from between the bushes.
Still the great bird flew on. Still we drove on after it, quite oblivious of the Red Flag which designated an army firing range. It was only when we drove round a particularly steep bend in the track and found ourselves confronted by two armoured cars and a bevy of men wearing battle dress and brandishing machine-guns that I realised quite how much trouble we were in. "Oh crap", I said.
With regret I stopped the car and watched our quarry flap a way out of sight. As the soldiers glared at us I got out of the car to apologise. A fierce looking military policeman came up to us and demanded to know who we were and what we were doing. As I started to try and explain about the great bustard I realised how unlikely it sounded. The military policeman demanded to look in the boot of the car. As I opened it I remembered that not only did it contain nearly 1000 illegal cassette tapes but it was also that temporary home for two plastic machine guns - from a fancy dress party that we had attended a few weeks before - and a human skull wrapped in a plastic bin bag. I had found the skull in a pile of remnants from the days when the hospital where I worked had been used for teaching purposes. It had no doubt once belonged to a pauper who had died intestate in the old poorhouse and who, having no goods or chatels to repossess had ended up having his or her very body taken over by an uncaring state. A century after the long-forgotten pauper had died, his or her skull had found itself in a skip awaiting removal to the incinerator. After checking with that the powers that be I had taken possession of the skull, meaning to keep it as a memento morii, put it into the boot of my car, and promptly forgot about it. I gasped, and half-a-dozen soldiers raised their weapons and pointed them at Richard and me. I continued to bluster on about great bustards, until the grim looking military policeman threatened to arrest us if I didn't shut up.
Britain is probably the only country in the world where I could have got away with anything as stupid as this. Anywhere else in the world I would have certainly been arrested, charged, tried for treason and probably ended up in a secure mental hospital somewhere far beyond the reach of Amnesty International, and where I would probably have spent the rest of my days, and furthermore I would have been the only person there who wasn't sane. As it was, even at the height of the Cold War, British justice and common sense prevailed, and after confiscating the plastic machine guns, and giving us the worst dressing-down I have ever received, they accepted my story about the great bustard and let us go.
Sadly, the identity of the great bird that we had been following and which had nearly got us shot, remains a mystery. However, over the last decade and a half I have been collecting material about the great bustard project. Because, even now, people still occasionally see these birds, it is tempting to theorise that the ill-fated project was more successful than those in charge of it had thought. Because so much of Salisbury Plain is set over for use by the military, if there are indeed small numbers of these magnificent fowl still living there, it is the British Army who has provided a mechanism for their survival. It would be sad if a by-product of the downscaling of the British military in the wake of the end of the Cold War was the final, ignominious extinction of these beautiful and exotic creatures.
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