The Great Bustard (Otis tarda), inhabits open, flat or slightly undulating, usually treeless cereal farmland. It belongs to a quite homogeneous bird family, the Otididae, which also includes two other species in Europe, the Little Bustard (Tetrax tetrax), widespread over the Iberian Peninsula, and the Houbara Bustard (Chlamydotis undulata), in the Canary Islands. Both are much smaller than Great Bustard.
The family Otididae, which currently includes 25 species, originated some 50 million years ago in Africa. Twenty-one of these species still survive in the African continent. Bustards inhabit dry or semiarid areas of temperate to tropical latitudes of all continents, with the exception of America and Antarctica.
