A maligned bird

Reading the Victoria County History of Sussex recently I came across a sentence that piqued my interest. Referring to the Great Park in Arundel, it said “an eyrie of sparrowhawks in the park was destroyed by bustards before 1272.”

It’s rare enough to find historical references to birds, let alone a reference to such a specific event some 750 years ago. But something seemed odd about it.

The interest in Sparrowhawks I could understand. The period was one of the high watermarks of falconry in Europe, with suitable species in great demand and as a result expensive. Falcons were the preserve of the nobility, meaning sparrowhawks were one of the main species used by others in the population. The Boke of St Albans noted two centuries later that hunting with sparrowhawks was specifically associated with priests.

Nor was there anything incongruous in the reference to Great Bustards, which were well established in Sussex at that time. The county’s population was only extirpated at least 500 years later, between the 1770s and 1820s.

What did seem odd was that the incident occurred in the Great Park. This was created after the Norman Conquest to the west of the present Arundel Park and east of the Rewell, then a separate ‘walk’ in Arundel forest. The Park – still remembered in the names Park Bottom and Park Farmhouse -- was described as mainly woodland at this date and so ideal for sparrowhawks. But for the same reason it seemed improbable habitat for bustards, which were birds of open downland. So how had bustards destroyed a sparrowhawk’s nest?

A footnote in the VCH gave the source of the information as the Calendar of Inquisitions Miscellaneous. The inquisitions were enquiries into complaints reported to the Chancery, in this case one carried out in 1272 into unlawful hunting in the forest.

A translation of the Calendar published in 1916 provides more detail on the incident. It says: “There are no eyries (heyrii) of falcons, sparrowhawks or herons in the forest, but there was one eyrie (erius) of sparrowhawks in Arundel Park which was destroyed by bustards (busardos).”

The reference to falcons as well as sparrowhawks would seem to confirm that the incident was recorded because of the value of the birds for hunting. As for herons, the RSPB has noted that “in medieval times the heron was a favourite quarry of falconers who valued its great flying skills and ability to evade the falcon's stoops.”

However, the translator’s reading of busardos as bustard is suspect. The Dictionary of Medieval Latin from British Sources does not include busardos but does have busardus, meaning Buzzard, which makes much more sense in the context of a wooded area. That the 1272 inquisition did indeed refer to buzzards was confirmed in a correction to the 1916 volume, which had not been picked up by the VCH.

There is a pleasing thought that Sparrowhawks and Buzzards are two of the commonest raptor species in the Water Woods and other remnants of the Great Park today, almost as though the descendants of the warring species were still present. Except, of course, that there were no sparrowhawks in the forest in 1272 and Buzzards were lost from Sussex for many years after they were extirpated in the 1880s, only to return the following century and become common in recent years.