Asian Houbara

The Asian houbara, or MacQueen's bustard, is a large, medium-sized bustard about 65 cm long with a wingspan of about 140 cm. It is brown above and white below, with black stripes down the sides of the neck, and from below the wing is mostly white with a black trailing edge. It is native to the desert and steppe regions of Asia, from the Sinai Peninsula across Iran to Kazakhstan and Mongolia (Wikipedia, general species account).

Northern populations winter further south, in Pakistan and in the dry arid zone of western India, and vagrants have been found as far west as Britain and as far south as northern Kerala. Males mate with several females, and after mating the female alone builds the nest and incubates. Numbers fell by 20–50% between 1984 and 2004, mainly through hunting and land-use change. A study in Iranian steppe found nest sites chosen mainly where insect prey were dense. SoIB 2023 rates it a High conservation priority: a winter migrant of grassland with a Restricted range of about 22,700 km² (Wikipedia, general species account; SoIB 2023).