Hen harriers feared stolen

Three protected hen harriers have vanished in suspicious circumstances.

Police and the RSPB are appealing for information on the satellite-tagged birds of prey that went missing in Scotland and Cumbria.

Saorsa, a female that fledged last June, was the first of the three to be lost after transmissions from the bird’s tag suddenly stopped in February in the Angus Glens, Scotland. Two male birds, named Blue and Finn went missing soon after, in March, with both tags working fine until that point.

Hatched in one of just three hen harrier nests to fledge young in England in 2016, Finn was tagged as a chick and has been tracked since, until its signal vanished near Moffat, in Scotland. RSPB staff conducted a search for all three birds, but no tags or bodies were found. They are the latest in a number of the birds to disappear in similar conditions. Samantha Herbert