The Dropia (Otis tarda) is truly a bird of Legend of the times when the Baragan plain, the Western Plain and the Dobrogea steppes were still islands of wild wilderness unstricted by man's hand. It is actually the largest flying bird in the world, heavier even than Swans and Pelicans. In the case of dropies, the greatest sexual dimorphism in the bird world is observed.
In other words, if a female dropie weighed between 3.5-5 kilograms, males typically reached 8-16 kilograms, there is evidence that some males even exceeded 18 kilograms. The famous Hunter and ornithologist Roman C. Rosetti Balanescu shot in Baragan a male weighing no less than 22 kilograms. Obviously such a bird could not escape unnoticed by the rural poverty in interwar Romania.
Unfortunately, the dropia is a bird that does not have the uropygian gland, in other words, it does not benefit from the fat-secreting gland with which most birds imbue their plumage to make it immune to moisture and rain. Pine the most dangerous enemy of the dropies is the pole. In winter, when it rains and frosts follow, the water on the plumage of the dropies freezes, and the birds can no longer fly. Tens of thousands of people fell victim between the 1920s and 1950s to real gangs of poachers who roamed the plains killing them barbarously with bat blows.
The last core of dropii in Romania, containing between 100-150 specimens was killed in Teleorman in 1981. The local villagers carried them like geese to the villages in the area where they were all killed with boulders, whips and beatings. Obviously in the Socialist Republic of Romania since then, the drops were declared on Paper Monuments of nature, their killing being forbidden by law, a law that was not taken seriously by anyone, considering that Nicolae Ceausescu himself, the first hunter of the country, had the habit of shooting the drops from the helicopter.
Besides the aspect of the Wild Hunt, the factor of aggressive agriculture practiced under the communist regime should be remembered. The "moderna" agriculture, where monocultures predominate along with chemical fertilizers, herbicides and pesticides used in abundance, has only systematically destroyed both the living conditions of dropia and literally poisoned its food sources. In these conditions, it should not surprise anyone that out of the tens of thousands of drops that populated Baragan 50-70 years ago, there is not a single brooding pair left at the level of the 90s.
Currently, the last field observations certifying the presence of dropia in the Western Plain in the years 2005-2007, refer only to a few isolated specimens belonging to the Hungarian dropii populations, which crossed the border in search of food. Unfortunately, no pair of dropies nest in Romania anymore. The largest flying bird has died out.
