When rewilding goes wrong: Bird hunted to extinction in Britain now wants human mate

Venture to the Salisbury Plain in the height of spring, and you may be lucky enough to catch the marvellous display of great bustards strutting their stuff in search of a mate.

But as her fellow females gather to critique the elaborate courtship rituals of their potential partners, one lonely bird, Gertrude, will make her own journey to Stonehenge looking for a different type of mate - a human.

Experts have said that Gertrude the great bustard is an example of when rewilding and reintroducing species back into a habitat does not quite go to plan.

She is thought to have sexually imprinted on the people who raised her as part of the Great Bustard Project instead of her own species, which has led to her trying to mate with humans instead of other birds.

Gertrude’s species is native to Britain but was hunted to extinction almost 200 years ago. A reintroduction project, founded in 2004, has been trying to bring the bird back to England, with limited success.

“Bustard reintroduction felt like low hanging fruit because they have been found in our fossil record and they were persecuted and eaten to extinction," Jamie Dunning, an ornithologist at Imperial College London, told the Telegraph.

“They need these big flatlands to live and breathe and we don't really have those any more.

“The grand ambition was that they would move out from the Salisbury Plain, become self-sustaining, and I'm not sure that they have. I'm not sure if that's realistic.”

The Great Bustard Group - whose patron is King Charles - started a 10-year reintroduction plan on Salisbury Plain in 2004 and Gertrude was hatched in 2011, one of 29 birds to be released on the plain that year.

The plain is now understood to be home to around 100 of the rare species.

The group used feeding puppets, which look like birds and are intended to replicate a mother feeding her young, and baggy suits to disguise their human features while feeding the infant birds.

David Waters, the founder of the Great Bustard Group, said: “For most of the birds it worked really well - if you appeared as a normal human they would run off and hide [when you tried to feed them].

“But things have happened in Gertrude’s life - we don’t know what - that have made her different.

“She lives as a wild bird for 50 weeks of the year but in spring all the other females go off to the Lek - where all the males gather and do their display.

“But Gertrude heads off to Stonehenge and spends maybe two or three weeks there trying to find a human to mate with.

“And then she goes off to lay her eggs but, sadly, they will inevitably be infertile.”

He added: “From a professional point of view it’s not what we want, we want to hand rear and protect the population. But I suppose she’s good PR for her species!”

Mr Dunning suggested Gertrude may have imprinted on the people who raised her after being with them too long and may also have become accustomed to the snacks and attention of people at Stonehenge after escaping from her original group.

“The habitat is great at Salisbury Plain but actually there's not a lot of good habitat beyond that point, there's not a lot for them to move into,” Mr Dunning added.

“It's maybe a good example of why great bustards might be missing something if one of them essentially just becomes an adopted human being at a big tourist site.

“There's two things here. One; the great busted reproduction is interesting and possibly not very successful.

“Even though we have great bustards breeding in England, the amount we have to help them and the habitat we have, that is, in a way, a success and a failure of reintroduction.

“We've managed to reintroduce them to the one good bit of habitat in the country, but they're probably not going to go much beyond that. So it's a question of are we wasting our money trying?”

However, the project itself may not be entirely to blame for Gertrude’s bizarre behaviour, as her easy life at one of Britain’s most famous tourist sites could have created a niche for her which she has merely exploited.

“The flip side is the behaviour of this one bustard, Gertrude, which I think is probably separate from that and probably more like sparrows at a cafe that will come and eat sandwiches. She's just sort of found an environment where it works for her,” said Mr Dunning.

“The reintroduction is an interesting story in itself, but really, Gertrude is kind of a huge sparrow at a cafe or a gull at the seaside.”