Great Bustard Old Country. Walk 6: in the sea near Auburn House

We've had a few foggy, very dull days lately, but today it dawned clear with blue sky and a light northerly wind. I get a morning train to Bridlington to remember an unusual event that happened almost 162 years ago, of course, in relation to the Great Bustard. This is one of my favourite East Yorkshire walks, from Bridlington to Fraisthorpe beach, and doing it with such wonderful weather is uplifting. The tide is low revealing a wide and long sandy beach, cut by small rivulets and pools. As I walk along the harbour wall, two Purple Sandpipers feed on the rocks at the base of the wall, while a couple dozen Redshank feed on the pools on the sand. I carry on walking south along Bridlington Promenade, a lone Redpoll flying over calling. Then I take the footpath across the dunes at Hilderthorpe, which offers great views of Bridlington Bay (top shot). The sea is flat as a mirror and I quickly spot a Red-throated Diver just off shore.

Purple Sandpiper at Bridlington Quay.

A crow got a crab, and a gull gave chase to have a go at stealing, it, unsuccessfully. The other crow seems to come along for moral support. 

View of the Marram Grass at the dunes.

Meadow Pipit.

Red-throated Diver.

As I turn my bins up to check what turns out to be a buoy, I'm 'bin-bombed' by a group of Bottlenose Dolphins! They are breaching and moving north quite fast. I'm no good counting dolphins, but I guess there must be at least five. I watch them and take some clips for a while, the first time I see them by Bridlington. What a lovelt surprise! Funnily enough, earlier at the promenade, I met someone I know who told me he's seen dolphins at Brid before.

Bottlenose Dolphin surfacing.

Breach!

It is quite mild in the sunshine and I have to stuff my coat in my backpack. Seven Skylarks chase chirping overhead. Two groups of 9 and 10 Oystercatchers sit by some pools. Sanderlings sprint along the tideline. I'm getting to Fraisthorpe Beach. I look at three Great Crested Grebes in the distance, then a bird on the beach calls my attention: a Snow Bunting! It is feeding with a pair of Pied Wagtails near the strandline, picking seeds and moving quite fast in between. With the low winter light I manage to take some decent shots. A family walking a dog flush it to the cliff, but it promptly returns and carry on feeding. At some point, another flies over calling, a wonderful chirping call, and the first Snow Bunting joins it and they both fly off.

Oystercatchers.

Snow Bunting.

Snow Bunting.

Snow Bunting and Pied Wagtail.

I counted 24 Sanderling in a loose line along a stretch of beach at Auburn Sands.

The bustard that came in off the sea

I have now got to the area I was aiming for: Auburn House. Today, Auburn house is long gone with the tides, it's old location on the beach. It was offshore, near here, that on the 11th of November of 1864, a fisherman named Welbourn picked a freshly dead Bustard floating on the sea. They sent the bird to Mr. T. Jones of Bridlington Quay, who the same day got in touch via telegram with Beverley doctor and ornithologist, William W. Boulton, Esq., offering the specimen for sale. Mr. Boulton, aware of the importance of the find, arranged for the bird to be sent to him on the next train. He carried out a detailed examination of the specimen, a female, which still had some green fine grass in its crop. Resident bustards had been extinct for a few decades and any individual finding was deemed of note. This was the last wild Bustard that (almost!) landed on East Yorkshire, a likely immigrant from the continent. Mr Boulton promptly wrote an article to The Zoologist with his findings. Mr. Boulton died in 1897 and it is likely that, once his collection was sold, the stuffed bustard was adquired by the Bridlington antiquarian, Mr. Thomas Boynton. It was Boynton who added the detail the bustard had been picked near Auburn house. Mr Thomas Boynton still held the mounted bustard on his collection, and the male specimen from the Scorborough collection when Nelson wrote his book (1907). At Mr Boynton's death in 1919, the bird passed to 'a well-known Yorkshire collector' according to Thomas Sheppard, Curator of Hull Museum, and the current whereabouts of this specimen are currently unknown.

The Migrants

Many bird species take advantage of the mild oceanic climate of the UK, and arrive in autumn and winter, migrating from the continent. When Bustards were still plentiful in Germany and other eastern European countries they behaved in the same way. During particularly hard winters, usually single birds or small flocks turned up in the various places in the UK. Migrants were likely to have also come here when the species was resident, but once the Bustard became extinct, they were more obvious. It is even possible that migrants contributed to obscure the date of extinction of the resident population.
Bird migration is a flexible strategy. Although many species migrate regularly and predictably, anticipating poor conditions, other species only move occasionally, in years where conditions are poor. These are usually referred to 'irruptions'. Species like Waxwings, Crossbills, or Siskins behave like this, in response to poor crops of seeds they rely on in the winter. Bustards do not dig for their food, like game birds, and lack a uropygial gland to waterproof their plumage. They don't do well when the ground is covered with snow, as they can't find food, and their plumage soaks when they sit on snow. Snow cover, rather than lack of food, is the best predictor of bustard irruptions. The figure below illustrates the likely geographical origin of the British immigrants in relation to winter temperature.

(from Martínez et al 2013 Records of Great Bustards Otis tarda in the Balearic Islands during the 19th century. Revista Catalana de Ornitologia, 29, 70–74.)

Historic bustard irruptions

Remarkable irruptions happened In the winters of 1870-71, 1879-80, and 1890-91 when considerable numbers occurred in the UK and in mainland Europe outside their breeding distribution, particularly Belgium, France and Italy, and even as far as the Mediterranean Islands. Females and immature individuals are more likely to migrate than males, the reason being that females and young individuals are the size of a goose, whilst males are the size of a mute swan. Small individuals have more energetic costs to stay when weather is hard. They are also likely to be outcompeted by the larger males. Therefore, it is less metabolically costly for a female to migrate when conditions are hard. Still, mortality during migration is a cost to pay, and there were noticeable reductions in populations as fewer individuals returned than had left the breeding grounds.

Strong irruptions were described for the winter of 1970-71, one of exceptional severity, and good numbers of bustards were noted in the UK. Yarrell describes 14 bustard records, from Somerset, North Devon, Middlesex, Northumberland, and Hampshire, all those where sex was given were females. Similarly, in 1879-80, bustards turned up in Jersey, Cornwall, Dorset, Kent, Essex, and Cambridgeshire, and an influx was also noted in France, where the species had also become extinct. In 1890-91 an influx of at least seven, all females, was noted from several places in the South of England. These irruptions kept happening through the 20th century, with the last noted one in the winter of 1969-70 when around 300 Great Bustards, mostly from East Germany, were seen in West Germany, Holland, Denmark, France and Scotland.

In Yorkshire, other than the Auburn House bird, two other immigrants, both females, were recorded after the residents' extinction. The first was killed at Rufforth, near York in 1861, the second, had ‘haunted the neighbourhood since Christmas’ and was eventually found dead at Islebeck Grange Farm, near Thirsk, on March 1st 1926. There have been no Yorkshire migrants of this species in the 100 years since, and these irruptions are unlikely to happen now due to the reduction of mainland European populations of the species and the amelioration of the climate.

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I'm surprised to find out that the Cow Shed is open on a Monday, and take advantage of it for a hot drink. I return on the clifftop path, which is the official route of the England Coastal Path, which I haven't done before. The Oystercatchers are gathering on the pastures behind the car park, displaced by the rising tide. It is not as sunny as earlier and the wind is more noticeable at the clifftop, but it is still quite balmy for November, probably quite a different situation from that day in November 1864.

Looking north towards Flamborough and Bridlington Bay. A slumped section of the cliff on the right.

A flock of Goldfinches were feeding on burdock seeds on the clifftop.

A view of Bridlington Harbour, where the bustard was probably landed.

Travel. Return train to Bridlington. All facilities at Bridlington. At Fraisthorpe beach there is a public toilet block by the Cow Shed cafe, which is open every day.

Route: Walk on the beach, dunes or clifftop. 10 km return. OS link. Check tides if planning to walk on the beach. There is a continuous coastal clifftop path.

More information

Boulton, W. W. (1865). Ornithological notes from Beverley. Zoologist, 23 9442–9446.

Fortune, R. (1926). Field Notes: Great Bustard in Yorkshire. The Naturalist, 51, 171.

Martínez, C., Ferrer, X., Borràs, R., Christel, I., & Cama, A. (2013) Records of Great Bustards Otis tarda in the Balearic Islands during the 19th century. Revista Catalana de Ornitologia, 29, 70–74.

Nelson, T. H., Clarke, W. E., & Boyes, F. (1907). The birds of Yorkshire: being a historical account of the avi-fauna of the County. A. Brown. v.2.

Sheppard, T. (1923). Yorkshire Great Bustards. The Naturalist, 48, 87–89.

Streich, W. J., Litzbarski, H., Ludwig, B., & Ludwig, S. (2006). What triggers facultative winter migration of Great Bustard (Otis tarda) in Central Europe? European Journal of Wildlife Research, 52(1), 48–53.

Yarrell, W., Newton, A., & Saunders, H. (1882). A history of British Birds (4th ed., Vol. 3). John van Voorst.