On Friday David Scott tied a sack over my head, bundled me into the boot of his car and drove to an undisclosed location somewhere on the edge of Salisbury Plain. I exaggerate, but this is the secret breeding place of the Great Bustard. The birds breed in private because, despite a fantastic reintroduction programme courtesy of the Great Bustard Group (of which David is a trustee), they remain precarious, and we don't want guerilla twitchers and egg-snatchers finding out where they are.
From a hide across from their corral - a series of lynchets down a slope of the Plain, fenced in against the foxes - we watched a drove of them. The biggest flying bird in England, the Great Bustard was native to these islands until the last of them was shot, in Wiltshire, in the 1870s. They are vast, standing a metre tall with a wingspan double that. The males wear a lovely motley of red, white and brown and are capable, when aroused, of a display that would make a peacock jealous. The females, more subfusc of dress, refuse to leave their eggs even when a combine harvester is bearing down on them. For this reason the GBG has recently - not without the local MP personally lobbying the Environment Minister to intervene in the bureaucracy - got a licence to allow the removal of eggs from out of harm's way ahead of the spring mowing.
GBG was founded 25 years ago and is still led by David Waters, a former Wiltshire policeman with a glorious Victorian mutton-chops-and-moustache. He fought for years for permission to bring the Great Bustard back to England, and specifically to Wiltshire where it has been the county symbol for centuries. He found breeders in Ukraine, and finally managed to bring a few dozen chicks back through Russia. Great Bustards propagate with difficulty, each female generally only producing two viable chicks in her lifetime. The Wiltshire group is now self-sustaining at last, but much remains to get them properly supported. The mission now is to have them recognised as native species - which of course they are, as history tells us - but this isn’t straightforward. To find out more please visit https://greatbustard.org/#about. Here I am (see picture) with Davids Waters and Scott, Pebble the dog, and a Great Bustard (stuffed).
Parliament was in recess (or prorogation to be precise) in early May in anticipation of the new session, opened (with much pomp, of which I approve) by Prince Charles in place of The Queen last Tuesday. I have spent the time with various local initiatives, including a very moving and inspiring event I organised with Julia’s House children’s hospice, kindly hosted by Wadworth in the ballroom behind the Bear in Devizes; a meeting with GWR to protest against the reduction in trains serving Bedwyn (see here); meetings with the various groups organising sponsors for Ukrainian refugees (Wiltshire is the second-most hospitable area in the UK for this, after Cornwall, with Marlborough the most hospitable place in Wiltshire); an awards ceremony for the Dorset and Wiltshire Fire and Rescue Service; and a public meeting in Marlborough Town Hall where a determined but courteous squad of Boris-bashers made their point, more than once.
Politics is clouded by one dominating fact: the rising cost of essentials including household energy, petrol, and food. The reasons are the spike in global demand following the opening of the world’s economy after the pandemic, and the near-closure of the world’s largest gas exporter (Russia) and one of the world’s largest wheat exporters (Ukraine). We must also accept we weren’t properly prepared for the energy squeeze, without sufficient domestic production (whether from carboniferous, green or nuclear sources). The Government is spending billions supporting low-income families cope with price rises, but more will be needed.
I made a pub drop-in (advertised via this email list) at the Seven Stars in Bottlesford on Friday evening. The villages of this area hug the slopes of the Pewsey Vale, and were described by the poet Edward Thomas in the 1930s:
‘All had their churches, graveyards, farms and byres,
Lurking to one side up the path and lanes,
Seldom well seen except by aeroplanes.’
Nearby is Swanborough Tump, a Bronze Age barrow which in the Middle Ages served as the local place of assembly. It was named not for swans but for swains, meaning the common people. Later a tradition of dissent grew up hereabouts, and in the 19th century a new (and now defunct) settlement appeared east of Bottlesford named Free Trade, presumably in defiance of the Tory protectionists of the time. Up these paths and lanes lurks the old English radical tradition. I honour it.
