Parrot News

11 July 2009

Spring in Scotland with Hen Harriers

Alan Lee

Wind whistles through the purple-green heather and grey clouds march across the rolling hills, bringing bands of light rain to water the moss and replenish the springs of the Scottish highlands. It is already nearly 11am and still my breath fogs up in front to me before being whisked away in the breeze. Its been five hours since the first Red grouse greeted the breaking dawn and my back, bum and legs are already aching – a combination of a long time sitting and a long hike the day before. Just another three days to go.

So why am I sitting all alone in the heather on a damp hillside? In the distance, across the valley, is a Hen harrier (Circus cyaneus) nest. Of the UK's birds of prey, this is the most intensively persecuted. With only 690 breeding pairs, the UK conservation status is red. This is the only pair we currently know of attempting to breed on the many thousands of square kilometre of estates managed for the hunting of Red grouse.

The female harrier I am trying to spot through the rain had laid three eggs when she was found by a walker over a week ago. Finally there is a break in the rain. From down the valley flies the distinctive male, white with black-tipped wings. He is reminiscent of a Black-shouldered kite, except the flight is a lot less steady. Instead of hovering for prey he flies only a few meters above the ground before somersaulting or dropping quickly down on unwary Meadow pipits or Bank voles.

To not disturb the birds I am a bit too far away to see what he is bringing to the female on this occasion. It’s far too small and slender to be a grouse. Perhaps it’s a lizard. He was been gone longer than his usual hour or so, but not made up with the prey item in size. The female must be hungry, but the male has to fly several times over her before she breaks cover, calling to him with long, thin whistles. He drops the food onto a grassy path and settles down. Once she lands to feed, her streaked, brown plumage makes her impossible to see with the naked eye, so well does she blend in. Meanwhile, I can easily see the white male, who has perched on a reedy knoll to rest and preen. All too quickly the female has finished her meal and is up into the air, calling hungrily, driving the male back up and out to hunt again. No wonder male harriers are 150g lighter than the 500g females! For a few minutes they fly together, enjoying some aerial acrobatics, before he glides down the valley on rocking wings.

The female does not return to the nest straight away. A Buzzard has appeared over a burnt section of heather on the rise of the valley. Despite being half the Buzzard’s weight the feisty female Hen harrier sets out to harass the larger bird soaring on more steady wings. As they tangle, only the pale rump of the harrier and white and black of the under-wings of the buzzard let me know which brown bird is which. The buzzard is in no mood to fight and with an air of aloof bemusement drifts slowly away over the horizon. Distracted by the buzzard, I have lost track of the harrier. I scan the valley, but see no trace. I wait anxiously for an hour, until the male returns again. He flies several times over the nest and I breathe a sigh of relief as she flies up to receive her meal, which this time she catches nimbly in the air. She must have returned to the nest low in the valley, where her brown body concealed her against the dark heather.

So why, with so much available habitat and food, is this the only young couple of harriers in eastern Scotland? Instead, the species eeks out its survival in marginal habitats to the north of Scotland, when species prediction maps show it could potentially occur almost anywhere across Great Britain. Any documentation describing Hen harriers will mention they are restricted by persecution. Not the kind of persecution where a few rogues with guns are taking pot-shots at passing birds, or even poor farmers hunting for subsistence, but targeted and widespread persecution that is equivalent to raptor genocide. Paradoxically this is done to protect another bird: the Red grouse (Lagopus lagopus), a gamebird similar in size to a spurfowl, weighing 600g. The distinctive dark-winged race scotica is endemic to Britain and Ireland and the main population is found within the UK.

Although globally listed as least concern, with around 155 000 pairs in 2000 (12% of the global breeding population), the Red grouse is on the UK amber list as the population is declining. According to the BTO the decline is driven by loss of heather moorland, increased predation from corvids and foxes, and an increasing incidence of viral disease. Raptor predation is believed not to affect breeding populations significantly, although it can reduce numbers in the post-breeding period when young naïve birds have yet to learn effective evasion techniques.

So, huge parts of Scotland are intensively managed so that rich estate owners and their friends can shoot Red grouse. Grouse shooting (and the "Glorious Twelfth" season opening day) can be traced back to 1853 and the invention of the breech loading gun. People would pay more to shoot grouse than to graze sheep. Up to ten shooters line up in holes (shooting butts) running up a slope. Beaters then drive the grouse towards the line of shooters. The average number of grouse shot (the bag) is X birds per person. More money is paid to shoot at estates where the bag is bigger.

In order to have lots of grouse to shoot, estate owners employ gamekeepers; one or more per estate depending on the size. In order to manage the land to optimize the bag gamekeepers systematically burn sections of the moor in order to maintain optimal food supply for grouse in the form of your heather shoots. They even go out at night to catch birds to rid them of ticks (some ticks carry a virus called louping ill). They have several legal ways of controlling grouse predators, including putting out hundreds of spring traps for stoats. The sight of a pole across a stream with a trap is not uncommon. Gamekeepers use ‘crow cage traps’ and ‘Larson traps’ to catch crows or corvids considered pest species. Crows are one of the few bird species not benefiting from the full protection extended to all UK birds by the ‘Wildlife and countryside Act of 1982’. Basically, it is illegal to kill a bird in the UK unless you have a license for certain ‘pest’ species, or gamebirds during the hunting season.

However, it has been recorded that birds of prey that get caught in crow cage traps are also killed. Apart from these traps, gamekeepers have been known to use a wide arsenal of illegal means of control, including buzzard traps, poles set with spring traps, snares and poison bait. Eggs and nests are systematically destroyed when found. Most difficult to document is how gamekeepers are using their shotguns, which they are entitled to for the control of rabbits and pest species. It isn’t uncommon to find a dead buzzard stuffed down a rabbit burrow, where an x-ray reveals the lead pellets fired from a shotgun.

It’s not just Hen harriers, all raptors are at risk; from the tiny Merlin to the majestic Golden eagle, from Tawny and Short-eared owls, to Ravens. Perhaps just like the average driver often breaks the law by breaking the speed limit, gamekeepers break the law by killing birds – but their crime is not so innocuous; it’s just harder to monitor, harder to prove in a court of law and not worth the bother to follow up by overworked police. However, their day to day activities have shaped the ranges of birds of prey as we see them to day across the UK.

Back on the hill, it is late afternoon. A movement on the track on the hill above the nest catches my eye. A dark green Landrover is rolling into view. With its hallmark spotlight on the roof, I know it’s a gamekeeper’s vehicle. It slows down and stops on the slope. Is he watching me or the harrier collecting nesting material in the valley below? After two long minutes it moves on. More urgent things to do elsewhere or is the keeper letting this pair survive?

A new morning, and a white curtain of low cloud surrounds me. My first glimpse of a harrier is fours hours after dawn, and the two hours later the cloud is starting to lift. The male flies in with the female’s first meal of the day. As he flies off, for a moment I think I am seeing double. While one female harrier hovers at the nest site, the male appears to be flying off in the company of another female. This male must be hot property since the bright, roving males are easier targets for shooters than the concealed and camouflaged females. But what does it mean for the fate of the nest? I see no more of the male or rival female for the rest of the day.

On my last morning I awake to gentle rain across the valley. For hours all I can do is huddle up and try to stay warm and dry. The rain clears by late morning, but still no sign of the birds. Has the male eloped? In the early afternoon he drifts casually up to the nest site. The female flies up, calling desperately. There is no apparent delivery of food and the male flies off, harassed by the female’s constant cries. The female flies around for a while, perhaps looking for a careless pipit. She soon returns empty clawed to the nest. Will this rare nesting attempt have been foiled not by man’s hand but, instead, an indecisive male?

My fears are unfounded. Within ten minutes the male has returned with a morsel of food and returns to feed the female two more times during the course of the afternoon. The morsels are quickly devoured. At one stage she continues to call from her perch and the male flies into mate, an awkward affair with much flapping of wings. As the long spring evening wears on the couple are hovering around after a feeding session when a Landrover appears on the horizon. Just then a brown form swoops over my head – it is the scorned female. It appears to me she is attempting to give away the location of the nest to the keeper! But the Landrover pauses only briefly as the females battle and the male dilly-dallies on the side lines. But the intruding female is soon vanquished. As I depart, all seems peaceful in the valley of the harriers.

A month later and the sun is no longer a stranger to the Cairngorms. Patches of seemingly lifeless grass are now green and the blooms of meadow flowers are revealed like jewels at my feet as I tread slowly across the hills back to the valley and the nest site. Areas of heather burnt and black at my last visit are now bright green with new shoots that attract herds of Red deer. Curlews, Golden plovers and Oystercatchers enliven the air with their calls and dancing.

As evening approaches and the sun plays hide and seek among the clouds, I pass a crag where once Golden eagles roosted. As I stare back to admire them I am startled to see the long winged brown shape of a raptor flying above the rocks. It is too small to be an eagle or a buzzard. Struggling to untangle my binoculars from the straps of my rucksack, I catch a glimpse of a tatty female harrier. So the second female has sought shelter in these crags, I presume to myself. At least she is alive. As I settle into my sleeping bag next to some old ruins not far away, she hovers across the horizon again. Several primary weathers are missing from her wings; she is a sad sight as she drifts off over the hill. But my thoughts are quickly distracted by the sight of dark clouds and rain rolling in over the horizon. I still have a long way to go and it looks like the going will be wet.

Two days later and the sun is trying to break through the mist at 4am. It’s cold and damp, so I curl up a while longer. It’s not far up the valley to go now. As I arrive at my observation point, the mist has retreated up the mountain enough for me to see the patch of heather where the nest is. By midday I have not seen any harrier. When three Meadow pipits start to sing and chase each other over the nest site, I know something is wrong. I approach slowly, hoping that at any moment the female will fly up. I arrive at the empty pile of reeds that was the nest. A few feet away deep in the heather is the emaciated corpse of a harrier chick big enough for the first feathers shafts to be emerging. The only life here, are the scavenging flies and beetles. The cause of the nest failure unknown, and these dark moors will keep their secrets. I only hope that somewhere out there the couple have survived and that next season will be a better one. It is a distant hope, but it appears that hope is all we have.