gustard

plural gustards

1. obsoleteA bird, the great bustard.

   It was found in the Merse of Berwickshire, in the south of Scotland, where it was called the "gustard" ; and in England on the Yorkshire Wolds, the open chalk country around Royston, and the chalk downs of Berkshire, Wiltshire, Dorset, Hampshire and Sussex.

   1952, Herbert Leeson Edlin, The Changing Wild Life of Britain, page 66

   2 more examples

   As a resident species it appears to have been entirely confined to Berwickshire; it is thus referred to by Hector Boece, who flourished about 350 years ago :--'Besides these, we have another foule in Mers, more strange and uncouth than all these aforementioned, called a Gustard, fully so great as a Swan, but in colour of feathers and tast of flesh little differing from a Partridge'.

   1881, Henry Eeles Dresser, A History of the Birds of Europe, page 7

   Translation: I have received from Scotland a picture of a web-footed bird purporting to be a Gustard which I have placed above after the wild Geese, since it is plainly different from a Gustard or Tarda which we are here describing, and perhaps he who sent it me has erred as regards its name. The true tarda, indeed, seems to be called Gustard by the British

   1923, The Scottish Naturalist, page 175