Walking into the Giant Panda Pavilion where you need to buy a separate ticket to visit the Beijing Zoo, you will be surprised to find that the first animal you see is not a giant panda, but a rare bird exhibition area on the right hand side after entering the door, one of which is the great bustard.
Many animal names are uncommon words, but the word "bustard", although not commonly used, is not very strange, and most people can see "old bustard" from literary works describing the Ming and Qing dynasties or the Republic of China, that is, women who organize prostitutes in brothels and profit from them (and sometimes pick up customers themselves). Therefore, the name makes the great bustard very "embarrassing".
However, "bustard" is a word next to the word bird after all, and it obviously originally referred to a bird. In the Book of Poetry, The Bustard Feather has "Su Su Bustard Feather, gathered in the bud thorns." "Sue the bustard, gather in the bud mulberry." The verses describe the sufferings of the people's lives in the way the bustards flutter their wings solemnly in the oak trees, sour dates and mulberry trees. It seems that there is nothing wrong with the name given to the great bustard by the ancients.
In fact, the association of bustards with brothels was a matter after the Ming Dynasty. Since then, people have made up absurd legends such as the "wife of a hundred birds" and even more absurd and ridiculous claims that "as long as the male birds of other birds fly over the sky, their figures reflect on the bustard's body will be crossed."
In fact, I believe in another interpretation of the word "bustard": because they like to move in groups, the ancients believed that they always integrated seventy groups together, so when describing this bird, using "seventy" plus the bird, it formed the word "bustard".
At the zoo, you can carefully admire the extraordinary aura of the great bustard, especially the male birds. Male and female bustards have mainly light brown body feathers, densely covered with mottled black markings. Among them, the male is nearly 1 meter long, the wings are spread out to more than 2 meters, weigh more than 10 kilograms, and the most peculiar thing is that there are slender and prominent white feathers on both sides of the chin, which are shaped like beards (Figure 1), so it is commonly known as "sheep's whisker bustard". The female bird does not have such a whisker, commonly known as the "stone bustard", its body shape is only about half of the male bird (Figure 2), the difference between the two is very large. ▼▼▼
Figure 1▲
Figure 2▲
If you come to the zoo in the spring, you may be able to enjoy the "dancing posture" of the great bustard courtship. The male wriggles back and forth in front of the female, and constantly makes a "silk, silk" sound, and flips its body sharply, trotting around for a while, pausing for a moment, showing off and showing off his style. It loosens its feathers all over its body, its throat swells into a dangling air sac, the bare skin under its neck turns bluish-gray, and it is divided into left and right feathers under the neck. While dancing, it will face the tail feathers straight up to the sky, showing the female the white feathers below, and the more and whiter they are exposed, the more favored they are with the female. ▼▼▼
Another "embarrassing" thing about the great bustard is that it is classified as a "wader" in the ecological taxon.
In fact, it does not rely on wetlands like herons, cranes and sandpipers, but mainly inhabits open plains, arid grasslands, savannas and semi-desert areas, and is a terrestrial bird. They are strong, have a pair of thick and long legs, like to stand their heads and necks very straight when running, a look of "holding their heads high", and seem to be a bit "dumb", quite a bit of the shadow of African ostriches, and even have the title of "ostrich of Eurasia".
However, it has 3 thick toes on its feet, one more than the African ostrich; it is much smaller than the ostrich. In addition, ostriches cannot fly, while great bustards can migrate long distances by flight and are one of the largest flying birds in the world today. In fact, the great bustard is far from the ostrich, and is closer to the crane, which is one of the reasons why it is listed as a wader, and has always been taxonomically affiliated with the order Cranes. However, compared with cranes, bustards also have long necks but are thicker, have shorter mouths, are fatter, have long but stronger feet, and are shorter than cranes, and do not fly like cranes protruding from the back of their tail feathers. There are hard scales on the feet, but no webbing. Therefore, in the new bird taxonomic system, bustards have become independent of the order Bustard, there are only 3 species in China, in addition to the great bustard, there are small bustards and wave-spotted bustards, all of which are only distributed in Xinjiang.
In the wild, the food of the great bustard is very mixed, mainly eating young leaves, young shoots, young grasses, seeds and animal foods such as insects and frogs, especially weevils, rape flower worms, locusts and other farmland pests, and sometimes eat grains and corn kernels scattered in the farmland. It is very alert and timid, whether standing on its feet or lying on the ground, always straightening its neck and head, looking around to see if there is a threat, especially from the air. In the zoo, it still maintains this habit. ▼▼▼
The great bustards of the Beijing Zoo used to be raised in the "Pheasant Garden". Wave-spotted bustards have also been raised here. The shape of the spotted bustard is between that of the great bustard and the small bustard, with a sharp yellow upperpart, a paler color on the head and neck, black spots on the back, and a long black and white crown on the head. On the side of the neck, there are long black and white feathers that lie vertically downwards hanging from the chest, which are not available in either the Great Bustard or the Small Bustard. ▼▼▼
In fact, whether it is placed in the giant panda pavilion or in the pheasant garden, it is not the most suitable place to display the great bustard, which can also be said to be an "embarrassing" place for the great bustard in the zoo. In the giant panda pavilion, the only place where the great bustard is not "embarrassed" is that its rarity is not worse than that of the giant panda, in the "List of Wild Animals under National Key Protection", the great bustard, as well as the small bustard and the wave spotted bustard are listed as national level i key protected wild animals.
There are 2 subspecies of the great bustard, the name subspecies in China only breeds in Xinjiang, so we usually say that the great bustard refers to the oriental subspecies (or common subspecies), breeding in Heilongjiang, Jilin, northwestern Liaoning, and Inner Mongolia and other places; wintering in Liaoning, Hebei, Shanxi, Henan, Shandong, Shaanxi, Jiangxi, Hubei and other provinces, occasionally seen in Fujian, in addition to a small number of populations staying in breeding grounds all year round. It may seem that its distribution range is not small, but the wild population of the great bustard is already quite sparse, and it is estimated that the current total number is only a few hundred. In addition, only a few zoos in the north have captive populations.
The great bustard is also called the ground duck in the folk, and there is a saying that "the swan is not as good as the ground duck", so that they are constantly hunted. In addition, over-reclamation and overgrazing of grasslands deprive them of suitable habitats; the heavy use of agricultural machinery and pesticides directly threatens to breed females, eggs and chicks; interference from human production activities indirectly affects the reproduction of great bustards; power lines and poaching near grasslands and farmland. Efforts to eliminate these disadvantages and enable the recovery and development of this rare bird still have a long way to go.
(The pictures in this article are all taken by the author)
Author: Li Xiangtao