Grey Ghosts and Ringtails

Late afternoon on Dartmoor in January.  The hills are merging their greyness with a murky sky.  The sun appears briefly as it descends through a narrow orange band below the western skyline.  As I ascend a slight rise towards the open moor, a low-flying bird of prey scatters a flock of fieldfares preparing to roost on the ground amongst the scattered gorse bushes. 

It’s rangy, all wings and tail, wings canted upwards and forwards, pumping in an uncharacteristically undignified fashion as it struggles to maintain its course through the insistent north-easterly.  This is what I’ve come to see, and I’ve been lucky enough to see a hen harrier within minutes of starting my winter dusk walk. 

As I rise towards the tor, the wind gets stiffer and the light dwindles still more.  What was a sombre sunset now produces a dull glow like an amber traffic light.  White banks of raffia-like dead purple moor grass have piled up on the windward side of every clump of gorse.  A female merlin rakes her way through the wind. 

Further away, above the darkening slopes of the tor, more hen harriers are tilting back and forth.  Three – four – with careful observation and patience, I clinch five above the horizon at once.  At least two of them are ghostly grey and white adult males, especially visible as the light fails.  I keep my distance, careful not to disturb them as they prepare to roost for the night.

I’ve always thought that ‘hen harrier’ is an unfortunate name.  Unique among British birds of prey in being named after its supposed pest tendencies, the handle seems a little unfair.  It’s hard to imagine these shy, graceful open country birds getting close enough to habitation to harry a chicken.  It’s also fairly unusual for males to take anything larger than a skylark. 

Yet like many predators, they used to be more common in our landscape, before changing land use and persecution pushed ever-dwindling numbers to remote northern moors as a breeder, and to heaths, moors and saltmarshes as a wintering bird.  The larger, more powerful females would certainly have killed domestic fowl, a tendency that began a story of conflict with humans that is sadly still as prevalent as ever.

In France the hen harrier is still a relatively common bird, nesting in a variety of open habitats including arable fields, but here in the UK, the parlous state of their breeding population has recently been in the news.  In England we’re down to a handful of birds; last summer only three pairs nested successfully. 

In the uplands of northern Britain the decline of the hen harrier is clearly linked to persecution by gamekeepers who see them as a threat to red grouse stocks.  As a low flying, ground nesting species, it is especially vulnerable to the illegal persecution that has led to calls for a license system for grouse moors, with some even demanding a ban. 

Here on Dartmoor, where it hasn’t conclusively bred since Victorian times, the hen harrier is a very scarce winter visitor and passage migrant, with fewer than ten birds - probably birds from the continent - present in a typical year.  Recently, however, a story appeared in the local press about a proposed scheme to reintroduce nesting harriers to the south west of England, beginning with the translocation of nestlings from the French population to a trial site on Salisbury Plain.  If this scheme is successful, birds might then potentially be reintroduced to other areas such as Dartmoor and Exmoor.

Exciting news, but I must admit to having mixed feelings.  IUCN guidelines state that for a reintroduction to go ahead, the factors that previously limited its population must no longer apply.  In the case of ongoing persecution of hen harriers on grouse moors, this is clearly not the case.  Is the government fudging the issue of illegal persecution?  Will the French authorities allow the translocation of ‘their’ birds for a risky, contentious scheme?  Is Dartmoor still a suitable place for nesting hen harriers?  With ever-increasing disturbance and the poor state of the moorland habitat in many areas, I’m doubtful.

But a part of me wants this scheme to happen.  Given that the illegal persecution of nesting harriers is proving hard to stamp out, perhaps it would be a good idea to establish new populations as buffers against declines elsewhere.  Raptors are always controversial (witness the debate about reintroducing white-tailed eagles to East Anglia), but reintroductions with this group of birds can work, as proved by the extraordinary recovery of the red kite.  Without direct measures, we may lose the hen harrier as a breeding bird. 

Speaking to Simon Lee, the project leader for the Southern Reintroduction Project (one of six government measures to help hen harriers), I’m reassured that the vexed future of these birds is in expert hands.  He believes that establishing a crop-nesting southern population of hen harriers will benefit the species by creating a new stronghold and generating public support, as has happened elsewhere with red kites. 

Despite opposition to ‘brood management’ or so-called ‘nest meddling’, I learn that hen harriers are surprisingly resilient, coping with well-meaning interventions while breeding.  Up to 80% of French nests are routinely rescued at harvest time by volunteers, who move them out of harm’s way in an ingenious procedure involving a chicken-wire cage (the name ‘hen’ harrier becoming all the more apt in the process).  The parents circle overhead and resume feeding their young as soon as the humans retreat.

Simon believes that using 20 to 30 French hen harrier chicks per year, from a population ‘imprinted’ on farmland nesting, will provide a source of birds that won’t impact negatively on their natal population.  Acutely aware of the controversies over harrier persecution in the north, he thinks that the project could avoid such pitfalls and buy the birds time while raising the profile of key issues.  “This project will help with the issues in the north.  Grouse shooting is a minority interest.  Perhaps this will lead to it becoming more of a mainstream debate.”

Nevertheless, there are tricky times ahead.  There may be a judicial review of Natural England’s license to ‘brood manage’ young hen harriers by moving them out of harm’s way.  The RSPB, among others, is opposed to the brood management approach.  Hen harriers are likely to be in the news for the foreseeable future.  “We need to shelter this from the politics, give it a distinct identity and focus on the pure benefits of a conservation project.”

Simon agrees that it would be preferable to remove the threat of illegal destruction and allow the hen harrier population to recover naturally, but fears that this is not a realistic proposition.  “Even if persecution stopped, their natural recovery would be quite slow due to the birds returning as adults to the areas where they were born.”

If only opposition to brood management were the only potential problem to consider.  However, speaking to a man who has been knocked off his feet by a female hen harrier defending her nest gives me hope for both man and bird.

Watching these buoyant, elegant raptors gathering to roost, I reflect that to lose them would be unthinkable.  The ghostly grey males swing back and forth, easier to see in the fading light than the earth-brown females and immature birds, known as ‘ringtails.’  The five birds conduct their own version of air traffic control, doing some last-minute hunting and sizing each other up to see who gets the prime roost spots. 

This strategy of roosting on the ground seems surprising, especially on such a cold night, but tucking down together amongst the tussocks of grass and dense low stands of western gorse must provide them with shared body warmth, some shelter from the elements and protection from predators.  As the light fails, it becomes harder and harder to see their distinctive slight, long-winged, long-tailed outlines – they’re now just an occasional flicker above the dark mass of conifers on the horizon. 

Roosting communally in winter is a habit that can get hen harriers in trouble.  People connected to shooting interests have been alleged to shoot harriers gathering at their traditional roosts, as it’s easy to predict their presence and to pick off several birds at one time.  The two ringtails allegedly shot on the Queen’s Sandringham Estate in Norfolk on the 24^th of October 2007 (a high-profile case that brought national press attention to the persecution of hen harriers) would have been gathering to roost.

One by one these beautiful birds drop to the ground, leaving the sky to the scudding shapes of woodcock flying out from cover to feed on open moorland at night.  I turn my back on the wind and begin the walk back to my car, trying to picture the incongruous image of slender harriers on the cold ground, the wind whistling around their owlish heads throughout the long night. 

Thankfully I have been the only person present tonight.  This roost site appears not to be well known, and no man with a shotgun threatens the elegant raptors that gather here.  The farmer whose animals graze this land is aware of the harriers’ presence and is sympathetic.  It seems that this winter roost site is safe for now from disturbance or burning to ‘improve’ the ground for grazing.  As I walk back,  I hope that I will continue to be able to see hen harriers on the moorland not far from my home.  And who knows, if human interventions succeed, even as a breeding bird once more?