‘Gone the wide waste of the wold, the home of the Bustard and Stone Curlew’ John Cordeaux, 1880
‘Some still remain on our Yorkshire Wolds. An acquaintance of mine pursued for three days the last summer, without effect, a brood [sic] of seven; and one of twelve, at least, he had heard of.’ Marmaduke Tunstall, F.R.S., of Wycliffe-on-Tees, 1784
My brother and I were driving on dusty country tracks between bare arable fields. It was New Year’s Eve 2025, early in the morning and we were intending to see Great Bustards. Disappointingly, a thick fog covered the undulating hills and fields. Despite this, I was glad to be out with him, our conversation flowing, catching up after a year apart. Were we going to see them? It seemed unlikely and I was ready to accept it wasn’t going to happen. Maybe next year? Just when we were about to give up and drive home, the sun started to sneak through the fog, and he said, ‘there they are!’ A line of about a dozen Great Bustard males, like ghosts emerging from the fog. They flew a short distance onto a ridge by a vineyard fence, staring at us.
This sighting, in central Spain near my hometown, planted the seed of an obsession with the Great Bustard, and in particular, its history and extinction in the Yorkshire Wolds. I've been reading all about them and digging out old records (or recollections, I should say, as there are few well dated records) of the existence of the Great Bustard in the Wolds. Soon Richard Middleton, from Hull Nats, joined the project and this effort has culminated on an article which hopefully will be out in The Naturalist, the journal of the Yorkshire Naturalists' Union.
The Great Bustard, Otis tarda, was the largest breeding bird in the UK, and inhabited open plains on chalk downs in the South of England, the brecks in Suffolk and Norfolk, and the Lincolnshire and Yorkshire Wolds. The species benefited from low intensity agriculture, with mixed farms that worked the land in rotation with crops and livestock. Rural depopulation in the Middle Ages due to a combination of factors including colder climate, crop failures, increased sheep farming and the Black Death, meant that great expanses of these areas became rabbit warrens and sheep walks. Both rabbit warrens and sheep walks were a feature of the Yorkshire Wolds before the time of the enclosure acts, and the Great Bustard thrived on them. The peak distribution of the species in historical times in the UK is thought to have been the 18th century. The seeds of their extinction were planted, as can be drawn from the words of Yorkshire ornithologist Marmaduke Tunstal's 'some still remain' at the end of the 18th century. Indeed, a few short decades later, the Great Bustard would no longer be a resident species. The last breeding attempt in the UK happened in Norfolk in the 1830s, and a decade earlier in the Yorkshire Wolds.
With this series of walks, I will explore the places of the Yorkshire Wolds associated with the species, from fields where they sighted, or hunted, to farms bearing their name, to halls where the gentry dined on them. Each walk will cover some then suitable habitat for the species, and present a topic in more detail, including the changes in the habitat and other species that were affected by them, and the direct causes thought to have resulted in the extinction of the Great Bustard in the Yorkshire Wolds.
The Yorkshire Wolds
The Yorkshire Wolds are an arc of rounded hills that stretch from the sheer cliffs of Flamborough Head to Hessle foreshore. The hills are made of a white, porous rock: chalk with some Jurassic limestones on the western edge. The rock formation is titled and form higher and steeper hills on the western and northern side (brows) whereas on the eastern side they form gentle slopes towards the river Hull and the plain of Holderness. The flat tops are called wolds and the valleys form dales, usually dry. Given the high porosity of the chalk, there is little superficial water on the Wold valleys, rainwater filters through the rock and emerges at the base of the chalk layer in the form of springs and chalk streams, where human settlements historically formed. The high Wolds themselves are thinly populated, and they are mostly cultivated in large arable fields. Pockets of grassland and woodland and plantations are present on the steeper dales. This wasn't always so, as the Wolds have undergone dramatic landscape changes through the ages. They were denuded and scoured by ice during the last Ice Age. Once the climate warmed, from 10,000 BC onwards, woodland colonised the hills, birch and pine first, ash, alder, elm and oak afterwards, with open grassland areas maintained open by wild herbivores like, wild cattle, Red and Roe Deer, Moose, Wild Boar and Beavers. Wolves, Lynx and Brown Bears were the top predators. It's hard to imagine what the Wolds would have looked like then, but the Jasmund National Park in North Germany can give you an idea. Humans were also part of the fauna around this time, small bands of hunter gatherers that had a limited impact on the landscape. The arrival of farmers from ca. 4000 BCE had a transforming impact on the landscape, with woodland cleared to make room for cereal cultivation and pastures for sheep and cattle. Woodland was also used as a resource, for timber and firewood and also to smelt iron. These early farmers cultivated small fields and practised mixed farming, using grazing animals to fertilise the land after harvest.
More information
Yorkshire Wolds proposed designation as Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. Here.
National Character Area 27: Yorkshire Wolds.
The walks
These are the planned walks. I will update them with links to the blog posts covering them. Note that there is very little overlap with the Yorkshire Wolds Way, which mainly follows the western escarpment of the Wolds. All walks are accessed by public transport and information on transport and facilities and the route taken will be provided.
Walk 2. Between Reighton and Bridlington. October
Walk 3. Scorborough. October
Walk 4. Auburn House. November.
Walk 5. Scarborough. December
Walk 6 Wansford. January
Walk 7 Bridlington Quay to Flamborough. March
Walk 8. Barrow Farm [Burrow farm], between Langtoft and Sledmere. March.
Walk 9. Flixton, Staxton and Folkton Wolds. April
Walk 10. A farm near the village of Hunmanby, and known as Hunmanby Field. June
Walk 11. On a wold, near Malton. June/July.
Walk 6. Rudston. July.
Walk 12. Boynton Hall
Walk 13. Foxholes
Walk 15. North Dalton & Haywold Fm. the egg? May
Walk 16. South Dalton
Walk 17. Bustard Nest Farm
Walk 18. Scampston Hall
Walk 19. Nunburnholme
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