Apollo goes into orbit over Spanish shores
A TWO-YEAR-OLD hen harrier named Apollo has become the first Lancashire bird to migrate over 1,000 miles to Spain, where he has spent the past two winters.
The young male was fitted with a satellitetracking device before he fledged from his nest on the United Utilities Bowland estate in 2019.
The satellite tag has allowed scientists at the RSPB to follow his incredible journey, taking him all the way to Extremadura, where he spent his first winter in 2019/20.
Apollo then flew back to Bowland in the spring of 2020, returning to breed with a young female just a few miles from where he himself had hatched.
Incredibly, Apollo then repeated his journey to Spain in autumn 2020, following a dead-straight line to the exact spot in Extremadura – a landscape of steppes, forest and farming between Lisbon and Madrid, and one of the most biodiverse places in Europe. Meanwhile, Apollo’s brother Dynamo, who was tagged at the same time, has not ventured more than 50 miles from Bowland.
Hen harriers are rare, protected birds of prey that breed in upland areas of the UK.
Males are a stunning grey and white with black wingtips and around the size of a medium gull. Their population declined by 24 per cent between 2004 and 2016 in England, largely due to human persecution, an issue mentioned often in this column.
Initially it was believed that most of our tagged hen harriers stayed in the
British uplands all year-round. However, it has become clear that around 10 per cent of birds cross the English Channel for the winter, some bound for France and a few, like Apollo, for Spain.
None of the tagged RSPB birds that made it to Spain had made it back to the UK, until now.
Some of the birds would have died from natural causes, maybe even got lost which does happen.
Occasionally the signals from Satellite tags just vanish from the screen, or indeed show the bird heading in the complete wrong direction as with, for example, the Magnificent Frigate Bird spotted drifting past Southern Ireland, or the bearded vulture which visited these parts last summer.
As for Apollo, the truth is that a die-hard band of shooters in Southern European countries have never been that fond of visiting raptors, no matter how much European Law theoretically protects them and thousands have met their fate at the end of a shotgun barrel.
Thankfully, Apollo was able to avoid the lead shot and his Spanish wintering ground had everything he needed – for a few months away. None of Apollo’s chicks are known to have survived, but the RSPB is hopeful that Apollo will return to Bowland in the coming months and breed once more. I will keep you posted on any news and hopefully it will be good. Hen Harrier are a red-listed species of conservation concern and are heavily persecuted in the UK.
In 2020, Dryad - another Trough of Bowland bird - was one of several hen harriers to disappear in suspicious circumstances.
The last definite ‘fix’ from the tag came from a grouse moor in North Yorkshire. Just saying.
The UK Red List for birds keeps track of how different species are doing, and birds that are rated red, in need of urgent action.
Shockingly, one in four of our birds is now on that list, 67 species in total.
It shows that many of our top singers are in trouble, including iconic crooners like nightingales, skylarks and cuckoos.
But more familiar garden species are red listed too, starlings, song thrushes and even house sparrows.
The assessment is based on the most up-to-date evidence available and criteria includes conservation status at Global and European levels, as well as within the UK: historical decline, trends in population and range, rarity, localised distribution and international importance.
Nineteen species were red listed last year for the first time due to worsening population status and one species, the dashing Merlin, was returned to the Red list. In most cases, this is due to evidence from monitoring schemes which demonstrate severe declines in breeding populations, for example, Curlew, Nightingale, Pied
Flycatcher, Whinchat, Grey Wagtail and Mistle Thrush and surveys of scarce breeders such as Dotterel, Black Redstart and Slavonian Grebe, or by seabird monitoring for Kittiwake and Shag.
The Puffin is red-listed due to its global assessment as Vulnerable.