Ruffs were formerly trapped for food in England in large numbers; on one occasion, 2,400 were served at Archbishop Neville's enthronement banquet in 1465.
The heavy toll on breeding birds, together with loss of habitat through drainage and collection by nineteenth-century trophy hunters and egg collectors, meant that the species became almost extinct in England by the 1880s, although recolonisation in small numbers has occurred since 1963 [REF].