LOWLAND HARRIERS

Have hen harriers always been restricted to breeding in the uplands in England? I’m aware that they are much more widespread in France.

Perhaps surprisingly, no one has any clear idea of the hen harrier’s status in England 200 years ago, though it seems likely that it bred regularly across England until the early 1800s. Several avifaunas (books on the birds of a county) suggest that this harrier was still a widespread breeding bird in Devon, Somerset, Hampshire, Kent, Surrey and Sussex until the 1820s and 1830s, but there is no hard evidence that this was the case. Part of the problem is confusion with the very similar Montagu’s harrier, which was only recognised as a separate species in 1802.

What records there are suggest that by the time Queen Victoria came to the throne, the hen harrier had become a very rare breeding bird in the southern half of England. We do know that a small population persisted on Exmoor until

1910, but there are remarkably few 20th-century records of birds nesting in England away from the grouse moors. As you note, hen harriers remain widespread breeding birds throughout much of France (5,300 to 8,000 females), and here they nest regularly on lowland farms. DT