Bustards | Otidiformes

Trapachtigen | Avutardas

Large, heavily built walking birds of open, treeless plains that do nearly everything on the ground: the foot has three stout, broad toes and no hind toe, so they cannot perch. They walk deliberately with the neck held up and, when alarmed, would rather crouch flat or walk away than take off, though on long broad wings they are strong fliers; a few species are among the heaviest birds still able to leave the ground. There is no preen gland; the plumage is maintained with dense powder down. The diet is mixed: herbs, leaves, seeds and pods, supplemented with large insects and other small animal prey.

Families in this order

Bustards | Otididae4 speciesSandy upperparts finely vermiculated with black, a plain grey neck and white underparts: on steppe or arable land a motionless bird is next to impossible to find, and that is the first line of defence. The sexes differ greatly in size — in the largest species the male weighs several times as much — and there is no pair bond: males display at traditional sites, raising neck and undertail feathers into a white ball visible for kilometres. The female then goes on alone: two or three eggs in a scrape on bare ground, incubated by her alone, and chicks that walk from the start but are still fed by her for the first weeks. In flight the wingbeats are slow and deep and the neck is held straight out, with large white panels flashing in the wing.