Abstract

Early documentary evidence provides good reason for believing that the Great Bustard Otis tarda did not colonise Britain until around the mid fifteenth century. This was perhaps part of a general increase in Europe and rooted in major ecological changes brought about by climatic deterioration and severe epidemic disease in the human population from the early fourteenth century. From the seventeenth century, the species was a regular and familiar member of the English avifauna and contemporary accounts in the seventeenth century and first half of the eighteenth, although couched in general terms, do not suggest that it was a scarce bird within its restricted range. It declined very rapidly from the late eighteenth century, a decline largely fuelled by human persecution.