Mystery of missing tagged hen harriers

A SECOND satellite-tagged hen harrier has gone missing in North Yorkshire, just weeks after another one stopped transmitting a signal.

The last satellite data from the second missing bird, a young female, showed it was on Thornton Rust moor, to the east of Semerwater, on September 29.

North Yorkshire Police said the raptor, which has brown feathers and is ringed with the code FJ48404, could have flown some distance since then.

Its disappearance follows that of another satellite-tagged hen harrier last month. Police searches have so far been unable to locate a young male bearing the ring number EA54306, last known to be in the Seavy Gutter area of Askrigg Common in Richmondshire on September 19.

Both the missing birds were tagged at a release site in the Yorkshire Dales over the summer as part of a hen harrier brood management scheme. Hen harriers are a protected species of serious conservation concern and the UK’s “most intensively persecuted”, according to the RSPB.

The second missing bird was known to have stayed in the Hawes area after its release. Its only excursion was to the Sedbergh area, then south to the West Pennine Moors near Horwich, before it returned to land near Semerwater.

Since its last transmission, Natural England has carried out checks and police officers have searched the area with Yorkshire Dales National Park rangers.

North Yorkshire has the unwanted record of being the UK’s worst hotspot for bird persecution and North Yorkshire Police said post-mortem examinations would take place if the birds are found dead to establish if crimes had been committed.

In August, a marsh harrier was found with a broken wing and a shotgun pellet lodged next to the fracture in a field near the village of Hutton Buscel, near Scarborough.