I was always vexed by these being in birdbooks of British Birds but actually being extinct; it was not until I read Bill Oddie’s Little Black Bird Book back in 1979-ish (yes, he really is a bona-fide birder, as-am I but less so nowadays) that I understood the motivation for putting them in books howeverso extinct: because they’re pretty, and fun to draw.

It’s nice to think bird-artists are human, too.

[news.bbc.co.uk]

Heaviest bird returns to Britain

Chicks of the great bustard, which was wiped out in Britain in the 19th Century, are on their way back to Wiltshire.

The birds are travelling from Moscow and are expected to arrive in the county this week. Eggs were collected in Russia from nests threatened with destruction.

Forty chicks of around one or two weeks old will be taken to Salisbury Plain where they will be reared and then released without having seen a human.

Efforts to re-introduce what is the world’s heaviest flying bird, nearly 175 years after it died out in Britain, is the aim of the British Great Bustard Group.