What the heck is a lek?
Males great bustards perform spectacular courtship displays, gathering at a ‘lek’ or small display ground to try to impress the females.
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Once, the horse had a glittering glass eye that would watch you as you went, but now it’s dull stone and concrete. This horse was cut in 1790. What has it seen? Some say that it may see spectral Roman soldiers with a gurt bird on a pole carried before them as they march across Cherhill Down. Or maybe Walter Leader – the head of the Cherhill Gang, highwaymen who robbed the stagecoaches on the roads below – who haunts the site of the gibbet just south of the Roman Road.
Males great bustards perform spectacular courtship displays, gathering at a ‘lek’ or small display ground to try to impress the females.
The great bustard has a dignified slow walk but tends to run when disturbed, rather than fly.
The hen-bird on display at The Salisbury Museum was one of the last great bustards to be eaten in the town!