Inglorious bustards

I never found the 1980s risqué comedian Stan Boardman particularly beguiling. His entire act seemed to consist of two gags. One featured the Focke-Wulf, the other the great bustard. Any interest I had in the Luftwaffe waned when I grew out of Airfix models.

I did, however, always have a sneaking fascination with the world’s heaviest flying bird. During the war my father, an arch naturalist, would daily take the train from Watton to Thetford to go to school. The Breckland landscape he described, through which his train steamed, was a “sea of rabbits, many jet black in colour”. His only other notes of interest were “grey partridges aplenty and a handful of roe and fallow, eking out a living among the scrub, sparse grasses, inland sand dunes and swathes of lichen”.

However, a little