THIS IS FINDON — These Chronicles are created by Valerie Martin and contain scenes from her home village of Findon, West Sussex, U.K.

THE SHEPHERDS' WILD TURKEY

This bird roamed the South Downs and is the result of Victorian taxidermy

Copyright Valerie Martin 2010

Published in October 2010 in Sussex Local.

I think just about everyone knows that bustards have been reintroduced in recent years after being extinct here due to over-zealous hunting.  You may not know that these gigantic birds had a comparatively peaceful stronghold on our downland up until the 1840s.    In earlier times they wandered at will and for most of the year were disturbed in their habitat only by the shepherds with their flocks.

Gilbert White, the natural historian of Selborne in Hampshire, was often seen passing through Findon on his carriage journeys to Ringmer to visit his Aunt.   Her rather enchanting name was Rebecca Snooke.   From references he made in his journals, I guess that he stopped off at the Gun Inn in The Square for a break in his trips.

What was Findon like at this time?  It was quite an obscure rural community and even the town of Worthing just to the south of Findon was described as inhabited —

Gilbert wrote on 15th December 1773 a tantalising one-liner recording his travels through our village en route for Ringmer  —

Annoying for us today, he added no further explanation.    If only he had written whereabouts in Findon that bustard farming went on, it would have given us a whole new window of opening into our a past community.   The breeding surely must have been conducted on quite a large scale for him to bother to mention it in his writings.  Perhaps on one of the larger estates?  We do not even know if Gilbert clapped eyes on the birds himself.  We have to be satisfied with the fact that “bustards are bred in the Parish of Findon”, which in those days must have been an ideal spot for them.

The magnificent, but nervous birds were built like a small ostrich and were turkey sized (about 40 lb), 3 ft. in length and nicknamed “the shepherds’ wild turkey”.    They were swift-running  with strong flight capabilities.  In fact, they were giants among birds with a 6 ft. wingspan — and must have been a stunning sight in the countryside until hunted to extinction.  The mating display on the downland was also a vision to behold.  The male would put its head into its feathers and ruffle himself up for all the world like a fluffy cushion.  Thus transforming a mostly brown bird into an entirely white one.

Gilbert White made another interesting observation concerning the local shepherds during passing through Findon in the summer of 1775, he wrote on 2nd August....

He made no further mention of the Findon bustareds.   William Borrer was born in 1814 not far away in Henfield and became a noted ornithologist of the nineteenth century.   Fortunately for us he was more informative on the subject of the bustards.  He left a description enabling us to imagine the birds grazing on the Sussex hillsides.  

He had been told by this grandfather about the familiar sight of big birds with long legs roaming in flocks.   His grandfather died in 1844 at the age of 91 and so we can glean a rough date of the hunting expeditions as the late 1700s or early 1800s.    He told the young lad he had his own hunting strategy and often caught bustards with his greyhounds by going out very early in the morning, especially after a fog the previous night.    He related he would search for young bustards foraging among the wet turnips in the farmers' fields.   This was when the large creatures were so soaked with the dampness they were unable to take off and escape him.    He claimed that he would sometimes go home with five or six in a morning.    Occasionally his greyhounds would catch an older bird and this would fight fearlessly and more than once his own hounds had been hurt.   His favourite place for hunting was the downland between Devil's Dyke and Thunders Barrow just above Southwick.   This area can be seen from Cissbury Ring and is just beyond Steep down — not all that far from Findon.  

Gradually the local bustards diminished in numbers and by c. 1830 there appears to have been only a single specimen occasionally seen near Blatchington by a Mr. Catt who farmed the area.   This lone creature was often seen frequenting the flat table-land which ran for a considerable distance in the direction of Devil's Dyke.    It was a time when the birds trembled on the verge of extinction.

Another bustard was reported on the downland above Brighton just prior to Christmas 1875.   It was eventually hunted and shot on the hills in the Eastbourne environs....... near Ripe on 12th January 1876.    People seemed to kill anything that moved in those days.  Since then the species vanished from our landscape and there were no further recorded sightings on the South Downs.

The size of the bustard led to its downfall, aided by human interference.  Hunting and the loss of the vast open downland as at Findon, dramatically reduced its numbers.  They were very wary, retiring birds and needed plenty of space to exist.

It was great to hear the news when bird conservationists were talking of reintroducing the bustard back into our country.  A licence was granted to import twenty-five birds each year for five years.  The project was increasingly important because the Russian bustard population on the steppes of the Volga was coming under pressure from agricultural development.  At the beginning of August 2004 the first bustard chicks arrived from Russia to start a new life in Britain.  The project was a delicate one undertaking to transport the chicks and care for them through quarantine.  Once reared they were given a warm welcome and their freedom to roam Salisbury Plain just as once the shepherds' wild turkeys graced the Findon landscape.

Good luck, baby bustard chicks!  I look forward to seeing you on the downland again but I think it will take a long, long time.

Continue if you would like to read about  The Holford Family's Sheep Fair Days   

This is Findon Village — www.findonvillage.com is a continually growing record created by Valerie Martin exclusively for documenting life in Findon.