Good news for the great bustard, the heaviest flying bird in the world: Great bustards have nested and chicks hatched in the UK for the first time since 1832.

The secret location of the chicks, somewhere on the Salisbury Plain, is home to two nests, and three chicks, which are apparently about the same size as a blackbird. Occasionally great bustards have wandered over to the UK from the European continent since the last native birds died in 1840, but these chicks are the first home-grown great bustards.

The Great Bustard Group, which arranged the importing of great bustards from Russia, and their subsequent reintroduction to the UK, is delighted. “It has been a hard struggle to get this far. I am exhausted and nearly broke, but to see Great Bustards breeding after an absence of 177 years is brilliant,” says GBG’s founder and director David Waters.

The GBG started the reintroduction in 2004, with birds from Saratov Oblast in southern Russia. The birds, which lived on prairie land, were at risk from agricultural developments.

The Brit press has heralded the birth (The Register, Independent, BBC), which comes only days after beavers were reintroduced into the wilds of Scotland.

Welcome back to the great bustard!

Image: the Great Bustard Group