The Hen Harrier

by Donald Watson

  It is a little easier to absorb the attitudes of a pair of harriers as they float and play at a distance, in the sky above their nesting ground. On a windy day they move slowly and can be held in the binoculars for a long time, but wings and tails are constantly being trimmed and many sketches are needed to record the full variety of postures. The most intriguing flight positions are always the most difficult and some, I find, are totally elusive. Perhaps this is as well, since if the best were attainable I might be tempted to give up. One such moment is when a cock harrier hurls himself earthward, or threshes upward in full display. I can only begin to suggest this extraordinary performance in a drawing.

  Like all nearly white birds, the male harrier is a superb subject for tonal study. One moment it is so dark against a bright sky that it is hard to distinguish from its mate. Banking a little, it catches a silver gleam of light on its upper surface. When this happens, the artist rapidly tries to note the extent of light and dark; it may bank enough for the white underparts to flash but the area of shadow cast on them by the wing needs to be noted. If the upper parts are caught in bright light the black wing ends will be lightened a little too, even warmed almost to purplish-brown by the sun, while the black on the underside of the shadowed wing-tip remains intense. In brilliant top-lighting the black almost merges with the rest of the pale wing. I recall Tunnicliffe’s Rooks sparkling white in a top light. Who has not seen this in Rook or Crow, but an artist needs some courage to portray them so. Too much reliance on field guides has perhaps left us expecting birds to present a norm in appearance. (Pictures in such books, with mass reproduction, are often far drabber in colour than the artist painted them.) When a cock Hen Harrier flies to the roost on a snowy, leaden-skied evening it can look a dark grey bird even in the best of plumage, but reflected light from ice or snow turns the underparts creamy-yellow. The chequered grey underwing of a female careening above moor or forest looks gilded and almost translucent in low sunlight.

  When sketching birds in the field I am often struck by the effects of weather or temperature on their appearance and note, too, how this changes strikingly according to whether the bird is at ease or alarmed. Never before the tropical summer of 1976 had I noticed Spotted Flycatchers looking almost as sylph-like as Swallows, and even the often loose-plumaged female Hen Harrier can look remarkably slim and well-groomed on a hot day.

  Talbot Kelly said that when the artist studies birds in the field he must always be conscious of the setting and learn to look at both at once. In some of my favourite bird paintings a bird plays only a small but vital part in the whole. Edwin Alexander, for instance, made a diminutive Dipper the focal point in a composition of boulders and trickling water; both bird and setting are simply stated and correctly related in scale. Sometimes a small-scale harrier, or a pair of harriers, seem to fit truthfully into a landscape painted out on the hill, but much greater problems are involved in selecting and synthesising the raw material of field sketches when the birds are to occupy a large part of the picture space. Then, in the studio, the artist aims to achieve a satisfying composition without losing the urgency of the field sketch. Too often, in my own experience, something is lost and if the result appears staged it must be considered a failure. The final setting for a Hen Harrier painting may include only a small patch of sky or hillside, or a balance of both, but somehow the illusion of space in the picture must not be diminished.

  Bird artists are sometimes scorned by art critics as mere zoological recorders (some, of course, are scorned for different and more justifiable reasons). Yet good bird pictures reveal a great variety of approach and it is usually easy to recognise the work of different artists at a glance. There is no reason why art should cease where ornithological illustration begins. Not without reason, Audubon remains the art critics’ favourite bird artist, although his main purpose was to leave a faithful record of what he had seen and, often, discovered for himself. As I look now at his dynamic study of a Marsh Hawk devouring its kill I marvel at his attention to such details as the grasp of the bird’s foot on its prey. So insatiable was Audubon’s appetite for work that he complained when he was prevented by sweltering heat from drawing for more than 16 hours in a day. Even within the limits set by the needs of identification guides it should be remembered that Peterson’s neatly summarised birds were an innovation not so many years ago.

  Modern photography can produce a beautiful and efficient record of a bird’s appearance, nevertheless, anyone who tries to draw birds must find that his powers of observation are sharpened in the process. He will have the satisfaction of discovering many surprising details of plumage and posture for himself. Each time that I stop to make a few rapid sketches of a brood of feathered young harriers, some new aspect of their complex appearance attracts my attention. At the end of another nesting season I have just had my first encounter with a partially melanistic nestling. I am by no means convinced that the slightly unpredictable colours and tones of a photograph would be the best method of recording its appearance.

  To some artists it seems right to distort or simplify bird shapes to such an extent that the model becomes barely recognisable. Probably I am not adventurous enough to go very far in this direction, but I confess that I have much sympathy with the splendid Dutch artist, Rien Poortvliet, when he says of animals in art: ‘it is impossible for me to deform them; perhaps I know too much of them to see them as circles or something like that’ (Buerschaper, 1975).

  PART 2

  A STUDY OF THE HEN HARRIER IN SOUTH-WEST SCOTLAND

  Introductory note to part two

  This account of the Hen Harrier in my home region begins in the long, fine summer of 1959 and spans 17 years, finishing in the even warmer, sunnier summer of 1976. During this period I studied Hen Harriers at all seasons.

  Initially, from 1959–65, most observations in the breeding season were made on Area A, an area of moorland of about 2,000 hectares, which consisted principally of two hill sheep farms. There was some grouse shooting and game keeper activity. Much of the ground was below 200 metres, sloping north and south from a higher ridge of 270–330 metres. Heather, grass and bracken covered most of the drier ground, and bog myrtle, bog-cotton, deer grass and sphagnum mosses were plentiful in the lower and wetter parts. There were numerous small outcrops of rock on the steeper slopes. Moorland nesting in a different area, Area B, some 48 kilometres away, was also studied, mainly by R. C. (Bert) Dickson, from 1968 onwards. This was mostly undulating heather moor and some more grassy or boggy valleys, with a high population of Red Grouse and active gamekeepering. It was also part of a sheep farm, and lay between 210–240 metres. Two nests were studied on other moorland, one on a keepered heather and bracken covered moor, at an elevation of about 300 metres, Area F, 64 kilometres away; the other on an unkeepered sheep farm, at about 420 metres, Area G, 40 kilometres away, where the vegetation was mainly grassland with extensive tracts of rushes.

  Hen Harriers were also studied in 1–20 year old conifer forests, especially in Areas C, D and E. Areas C and E were contiguous with Area A and Area D adjoined Area C. Areas C and D, together, covered about 9,000 hectares, including some unplanted ground. The planted ground in Areas C and D was largely between 100 and 300 metres and the unplanted ground was mostly between 300 and 500 metres. Area E, with no unplanted high ground, covered about 400 hectares, all between 200 and 275 metres. These areas were part of a much wider extent of forest, parts of which were over 20 years old by 1959 and probably already unsuitable for harrier nesting.

  Observations were also made, to varying degrees, in neighbouring forests, especially in Areas H and J, in both of which nesting occurred at least once, and one forest nest was studied in Area K. The trees in these forests were of similar age structure to those in Areas C, D and E; Area H consisted of about 900 hectares, mainly between 225 and 360 metres, area J about 1,400 hectares, mainly between 165 and 820 metres, and Area K was part of a much larger area of forest in a similar range of elevation. From the neares
t part of Area D, the approximate distances to Area H, J and K were respectively 6.4 kilometres, 9.6 kilometres and 24 kilometres.

  In reading the following narrative accounts, it will be helpful to refer at times to Figure 10. This shows the annual number of known nests, excluding repeats (and the number of extra pairs or single birds when nests were not found) in Areas A, C, D, E, H and J, about 12,000 hectares and some adjacent ground. It was considered that Areas H and J were sufficiently well watched and close to the special areas to justify the inclusion of the two nests and the sightings of pairs there, in the graph.

  Fig. 10 Hen Harriers and nests in south-west Scotland in Areas,

  A, C, D, E, H and J

  As described in the historical section of this book, an increasing number of pairs was noted in south-west Scotland as a whole during the 1960s but it is doubtful if there has been a further increase since about 1970. In recent years I have had increasing contact with people who might know of breeding Hen Harriers over a wide area and it is therefore impossible to make accurate comparisons with the early years for south-west Scotland as a whole. Nevertheless very few reports of proved nesting outside my special area have been received, apart from those in Area B, where R. C. Dickson has made thorough observations since 1968.

  In Chapter 15 I have given some breeding data using nests from all areas detailed above and particularly comparing success in moorland and forest.

  In Chapter 16 I have discussed food and hunting grounds in the breeding season for my special area and given details of prey remains identified in various ways. This section is followed by an account of food and hunting grounds in the winter. Diurnal sightings of Hen Harriers within 24 kilometres of a major roost have been recorded for a number of years and I am greatly indebted to Louis Urquhart for the work he has done in plotting these. They have been used in an attempt to discover which types of habitat are locally most favoured by hunting Hen Harriers, and whether males and females have different preferences. The final section in this part of the book gives an account of observations at a winter roost (Roost 1), on bogland, adjacent to Area C, and makes some comparisons with studies made by R. C. Dickson at a different roost (Roost 2) about 16 kilometres from Area B, and discusses the problems arising from the study of winter roosts in south-west Scotland.

  Area A – Moorland

  Areas C and D – Forest

  Area E – Forest

  Sketch/diagrams of characteristic habitats in Areas A, C, D and E. Note: Area B (Moorland) is somewhat similar to Area A, mostly 210–240 metres altitude.

  CHAPTER NINE

  The Beginning: The 1950s

  Before 1959 the only Hen Harriers I had seen in the Stewartry of Kirkcudbright were occasional birds in winter, hunting the marshes of Loch Ken or the fringes of the hills. Even before the 1939–45 war, they had been seen not uncommonly in autumn and winter on the extensive moors of South Ayrshire and Wigtownshire where, in 1930, Maurice Portal recorded (Seigne, 1930) the arrival of one Hen Harrier about 12 October, for five successive years. Such harriers were very likely to be shot or trapped. Reflecting on the scanty local information on the bird before 1959, I have often wondered how, long before that year, it had bred undetected or unreported. Strangely, it was the attempted breeding of a pair of the even rarer Montagu’s Harriers in a young conifer plantation at Corriedoo, near Dalry, in 1953 (sadly, the female was caught in a gin trap placed at the nest), that first alerted me to keep a special look out for nesting harriers. This occurred at a time when the British population of Montagu’s Harriers was in a far healthier state than now and when breeding records as far north as Perthshire raised hopes of continued nesting in Scotland.

  The considerable local interest aroused by the Galloway incident complicated the problem of establishing when Hen Harriers began to recolonise the region, and any harrier seen was likely to be reported as a Montagu’s. Derek Ratcliffe had a distant view of a probable pair of harriers of unknown species in the High Ken valley in 1950; and it will never be known which harriers were seen near Lochinvar in the same neighbourhood by the Dairy postman, Hugh Clark, in the summer of 1951. He later described what he saw to Louis Urquhart and there is little doubt that it was a pair of harriers in the act of the food pass. ‘He thought it was a seagull of some kind, though a most unusual-looking gull which made him remember it. Following the “gull” had been a big “Sparrowhawk”, long-winged, apparently chasing the gull. There had also been a Great Black-backed Gull around and the grouse were alarmed and flying in all directions, which he attributed as much to the presence of the “gulls” as to the “Sparrowhawk”.’ As already mentioned, a distant view of a male harrier is easily confused with a gull; even the great naturalist, Sir William Jardine, misinterpreted the food pass as ‘the female not suffering the male to approach the nest’.

  Although there is little doubt that the pair of Hen Harriers which nested in 1959 had been preceded by others, there cannot have been many nests in earlier years, for none of the keen-eyed nest hunters who regularly combed the Galloway hills for Golden Eagles, Buzzards and Peregrines had any knowledge of Hen Harriers’ nests at this period. During the mid 1950s, however, adult male Hen Harriers were occasionally identified in summer, in south Ayrshire, by the late Sir Geoffrey Hughes-Onslow and others. The first clue that a pair might be breeding in the Stewartry came when Commander Graham reported to Arthur Duncan (later Sir Arthur) that a male harrier in grey plumage had flown across a hill road in front of his car, one day in the summer of 1958. Then, one snowy winter’s night in 1958, I took that same road on my way to give a talk and, en route, dropped Frank Dalziel, from Dalry, at the road-end to the remote house on the moor where his brother and nephew were shepherds. It seemed just worth while suggesting that he might ask them if they had ever seen any large hawks fitting a description of harriers. When I collected Frank in a whirl of snow, near midnight, he had a positive report—they had seen such birds—and I knew that next spring I should be there.

  Male Montagu’s Harrier

  CHAPTER TEN

  Watch in the Heather:the First Nest

  My first visit to the likely nesting ground, in 1959, was not until 21 May. On this and many subsequent days my companion was the late Alan Mills, already nearly 70 years old, but fit and eager for the search. He brought a blend of enthusiasm, patience and quiet humour to our watches. Our first call was at the shepherds’ house. Will Dalziel said he had seen the birds for some weeks past, a ‘white yin’ and a ‘broon yin’. This was the first year he and his father had seen a white one, but brown birds had been about for eight seasons. They pointed out the hill recently frequented by the pair.

  Our first move was misguided. We walked all over the hill, which was well covered with old, tall heather and steep in places, lost a lot of sweat, and obviously did not find a nest. With hindsight it is easy to say that even if we had flushed an incubating hen, we ought to have been ashamed for disturbing her without need. As we came down, a little disconsolately, I looked back and was just in time to catch a dazzling glimpse of a cock harrier, white as a gull and black wing-tipped, as it swept away on the wind and breasted the slope of another hill across the valley. I could hardly believe our good fortune—there could be little doubt that somewhere a hen was on eggs and there was no more likely site than the deep heather on the hill we had just left. Yet, as I learned from experience later, that first sight of the cock might have been miles from a nest and, of course, there might not have been a nest at all.

  Fortunately, our next move was more sensible. We retired to watch our hill from a distance, choosing a sheltered, grassy spot, concealed from the road above by a convenient little rocky bluff. In retrospect we were, perhaps, too near to the likely nesting hill. At 500 metres from its base we ran the risk that the birds would be disturbed by our presence, and if the cock had kept away we should have discovered nothing. But we had all the luck that day. At 17.45, when we had been watching for nearly three hours, the cock flashed into view from behind
us, approaching the hill in a long, fast glide. A lowered foot, carrying prey, was at once apparent, and in seconds the big brown hen was up beside him, the two flying almost together before the cock jinked and passed the prey to her. The cock flew on and was quickly out of sight behind the hill.

  Meanwhile, the hen had alighted in the heather to feed. When, 15 minutes later, she rose, circling slowly in the evening sunlight above the now shadowed heather slopes, I knew that I must keep her in view and that, this time, she would surely return to a nest. She was crossing the lower slope of the hill, just above eye-level from our view point, conspicuous in her rich buff and brown plumage with the clear white patch at the tail base, when she suddenly vanished, dipping neatly into the heather where the nest must be. As the old collectors might have said, ‘the nest was ours’, but should we permit ourselves a look at its contents? Neither of us had ever seen a Hen Harrier’s nest before. We started forward, but, within yards of the nest, when the female had still not risen, I thought that to flush her from eggs almost at our feet might conceivably cause desertion. So, at the last moment, we withdrew, content with the certainty that she was still safely on the nest. On this first day I had begun to learn. One lesson was to stay well away from a suspected nesting area and watch patiently for the food pass if you hope to locate a nest; and another, that the female Hen Harrier may be a very close sitter. Later, I was to discover that this was the general rule. Indeed, at all the nests in my experience, a female with eggs or small young has sat tight at less than 20 metres, and usually at less than five.