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.
Menu
The fateful day was 12 October 1706. A fishmonger travelling from Poole to Bere Regis passed through Shapwick and … something fell from his cart. A villager, passing along the road as the sun was going down, saw it first. In the slanting light was as strange a thing as he’d ever seen. Armoured and threatening him with its pincers, it scuttled fast away – sideways! The villager took fright and raised everyone in the village to come out with pitchforks and cudgels to chase away the very Devil from their midst. The monster – really only 30 centimetres wide – scuttled back and forth, trying to get away from torches, pitchforks, villagers, and all. Then the fishmonger came back for his prize. ‘What’s this?’ he cried. ‘Why are you all hunting my crab!’ He scooped it up and rode off, laughing that Shapwick folk did not know such a common creature – and spread the word that Shapwick folk were fools. ‘A Shapwick monster’ became a saying in Dorset for something too extraordinary to be explained.
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!