What the heck is a lek?
Males great bustards perform spectacular courtship displays, gathering at a ‘lek’ or small display ground to try to impress the females.
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This flint arrowhead was made thousands of years ago and discovered during excavations on the former Moortown Aerodrome site in Canford Park. Normally the narrow end of the arrowhead is the business end but for the petit tranchet types it’s the wide and chisel-like end that does the damage to your target!
Flint tools like this arrowhead were among the earliest ever made by humans tens of thousands of years ago, and were so effective they endured well after metal tools became available. This means they can be quite tricky to date! The collections team at Poole Museum believe the arrowhead is from a Neolithic pit which would mean it is about 2000-5000 years old.
Flint is incredibly sharp once it has been knapped so it’s perfect for arrowheads, blades, and scrapers. The unusual thing about this type of arrowhead is that the broad end, rather than the narrow, was fired towards the target. Petit-tranchet arrowheads are particularly associated with hunting birds, mainly when they had come to roost in a tree or on the ground. The wide chisel-like design probably lowered the range, but this wouldn’t have been too much of a problem against a stationary target, and it would have given it extra weight and power. It could easily have stunned a roosting bird even if it didn’t have the piercing power of a more traditional arrowhead.
Hunting birds around Poole Harbour and its hinterland must have been a vital source of food for the Neolithic people in the area, although their settlements were probably further inland where the soil was better for farming. Once the town of Poole itself was founded hunting birds and scavenging for eggs was no less significant in spicing up the diets of the townspeople and there is plenty of archaeological evidence with bird bones being unearthed from many sites around the town.
Eventually, though, wildfowling became more of a sport or a job than a matter of survival and in the 19th century Poole Harbour was renowned for the quality of its shooting. The shallow drafted Poole canoe or gun punt was specially designed to allow wildfowlers to explore the nooks and crannies of the harbour and lie in wait with their huge fowling guns to try and bag as many birds as possible.
Noted 19th century sportsman Colonel Peter Hawker declared Poole Harbour ‘one of the best grounds for wildfowl in the kingdom’ and boasted that his man James Reade had once killed 20 birds in one shot from his ‘old Poole punt’.
![Wildfowling in Poole/Poole History Centre] – A Poole Canoe in the harbour with its wildfowling piece in position](https://www.wessexmuseums.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/arrowhead-3-scaled.jpg)
Males great bustards perform spectacular courtship displays, gathering at a ‘lek’ or small display ground to try to impress the females.
The great bustard has a dignified slow walk but tends to run when disturbed, rather than fly.
The hen-bird on display at The Salisbury Museum was one of the last great bustards to be eaten in the town!