The Hen Harrier Read online

  Fig. 7 Maps (a) to (g) show approximate areas within which breeding is believed to have occurred in the period c. 1825–1975. The c. 1975 map is largely based on the Hen Harrier provisional map for The Atlas of Breeding Birds in Britain and Ireland, and I am grateful to the British Trust for Ornithology and Dr J. T. R. Sharrock for allowing use of the material. David Scott kindly checked all my Irish maps and supplied much information on recent changes.

  On the north-west mainland, Harvie-Brown and Macpherson, in 1904, said it was approaching extinction. It was still attempting to breed at Inchnadamph in the 1890s and large clutches of six in 1893, and eight in 1894, were laid but the eggs were taken and the birds shot. When Buckley was in Attadale, West Ross, back in 1881–83, he had seen no harriers and only three old nests of former years, near Loch Monar. In 1887, Buckley and Harvie-Brown said it was ‘resident and still fairly common in the east’, of Sutherland and Caithness, ‘though killed down on every occasion that offers’. The remote moors of south Caithness, where Osborne had found many nesting ‘on open wastes or in thick furze coverts’, provided one of the last hideouts for harriers on the mainland. I have been unable to discover when it ceased to nest in Caithness but it was probably about the turn of the century, when, according to Ian Pennie (1962–63), it no longer nested in any part of Sutherland. Sim wrote of Deeside in 1903 that it was ‘almost exterminated’ but it was probably rare in this heavily keepered area long before then.

  Much later, in 1922, a pair was killed at a nest at Logiealmond, Perthshire. Desmond Nethersole-Thompson, in his long experience of Speyside from 1932 onwards, found only one nest there, in Abernethy Forest in 1936. He also saw birds in Donside and believes that there may have been a pocket of survival there from the old days.

  The most intriguing question in the history of the Scottish Hen Harriers at this period is, did they survive in the south-west Highlands long after they were virtually extinct everywhere else in Scotland apart from Orkney and the Outer Hebrides? The evidence is worth examining. While Harvie-Brown and others were writing comprehensive accounts of most of the faunal regions of Scotland, Argyll lacked such a chronicler. We have to consult later writers. McWilliam said that it was extinct at Inveraray by 1892 but makes no reference to Kintyre. Dugald Macintyre, gamekeeper and author of books on wildlife, wrote in 1936 of Kintyre: ‘The Hen Harrier was on daily view on a “moss” in my early days and I saw a couple on it in March 1919’. At one time he had seen three males hunting a snipe bog within sight of each other and he had found a nest from which five young flew. As a gamekeeper he showed no animosity to harriers in his writings. He even found the spot, on a bank of very tall heather, where the old male and ‘his less perfectly plumaged son’ (presumably a 2nd year male) roosted in winter. He examined their castings which showed that they fed mainly on small rodents and snipe. His conclusion that the two males overwintered, while ‘the female and the other young’ had left, fits with present day observations that grey males predominate in southern Kintyre in winter. To what date was he referring when he wrote of ‘my young days’? Did a pair nest in 1919? The answers to these questions might show that Hen Harriers never died out in Kintyre, where landowners were more interested in varied rough shooting and wildfowling than grouse, and harriers were acknowledged as hunters of voles and young rabbits.

  There is perhaps even stronger evidence that Hen Harriers lived on in Arran at least until the 1914–18 war. Baxter and Rintoul (1953) stated that they nested there, about Shiskine, in 1909, and Nicol Hopkins wrote in 1917: ‘They are still to be seen in Arran and I believe still nest there—at any rate they still did at a very recent date’. Even though McWilliam quoted a keeper as saying they had gone by 1912, there seems no reason to doubt Nicol Hopkins—lack of keepering during the war should have allowed them to maintain their hold. It is, however, very doubtful whether breeding continued after this war period. I do recall, nonetheless, that when my brother and I made youthful bird-watching trips to Arran in 1933 we found that little had been recorded of the birds in the immediately preceding years, though we saw no harriers. Prior to the early 1890s, they were common in Islay and Mull, probably in Jura as well, but it can only be surmised that they did not survive much later in these islands. Baxter and Rintoul quoted Scott Skirving (1895) on Islay: ‘I regret to note that for the first time for nineteen years I saw no Hen Harrier last August or September. Formerly they were numerous’. Baxter and Rintoul commented: ‘One cannot help wondering if these were the autumn wanderings of birds from the Outer Hebrides or whether he was only there during these months, and referred to birds bred on the island’. In 1934–36 when I stayed on Islay with Lionel Smith he saw harriers more than once in August or September. Very likely these were migrants from the Outer Hebrides.

  As a postscript on south-west Scotland south of the Clyde it is worth noting Richmond Paton’s statement, in 1929, that they attempted to breed ‘till recently’ in the Barrhill area of south Ayrshire, and the Renfrewshire record, by John Paterson and Thornton MacKeith (1915), of a pair prospecting at Inverkip in April 1906. Further south in Dumfries and Galloway, the only published evidence of breeding between the 1860s and recent times is a probable record for the Dumfries–Cumberland border about 1925 (Witherby, 1939). Derek Ratcliffe, however, was told by Ernest Blezard that a keeper destroyed at least three nests on moorland near Langholm, Dumfriesshire, during the 1920s and Blezard himself had seen a ringtail harrier in this area during the breeding season, in the same period and a pair possibly bred successfully near Closeburn, Dumfriesshire in 1920 (Gladstone, 1923). When it is considered that an enormous area of moorland in south-west Scotland was little traversed except by shepherds and keepers and that keepers might be secretive if a nest was found, the strong possibility remains that nesting never entirely ceased in south-west Scotland. If so, it is unlikely that many broods escaped the keepers. As harriers became increasingly rare, as breeding birds, reports from many parts of Britain showed, not surprisingly, that they were becoming very scarce in winter.

  Throughout the whole of the first half of the 20th century, Hen Harriers bred extremely rarely in England and Wales. The Handbook of British Birds (1939) said: ‘has nested in last 30 years Cornwall, Hants, Surrey (1932), Anglesey (1924, 5 and 6, W. Aspen) and Caernarvon, and possibly Devon’. In none of these areas was there any continuity of nesting into the recent period of recovery. Most were probably isolated occurrences, like the remarkable record for a Surrey heath in 1932, graphically described by Desmond Nethersole-Thompson in the Oologists’ Record, 1933. The nest had five eggs, four of which hatched. The Devonian nesting is obscure. Robert Moore, in his Birds of Devon (1969), acknowledges no definite nesting after 1893, though he believed there were records in 1942 and 1943, details of which were suppressed. Nevertheless, Jourdain certainly had knowledge of breeding somewhere in ‘the Devonian peninsula’ in the 1930s. (See his summary of the British status in the 1932 edition of Kirkman and Jourdain’s British Birds.) According to Palmer and Ballance (1968) nesting occurred on Exmoor, Somerset, up to 1910, possibly again in 1920 and 1925 and a pair were present on Sedge Moor in May 1934.

  In 1948, Ryves knew the bird only as a winter visitor to Cornwall. Clifford Oakes (1953) suggests that in 1943 a pair may have bred (or attempted to breed) on the ‘southern mosses’ of Lancashire, where a Hen Harrier was shot while carrying food. In Suffolk breeding was ‘probable’ in 1918 and again in 1929 (Payn, 1962). Bolam concluded that by 1913 there was only a memory of Hen Harriers breeding in Wales, and made a strong plea for the same protection measures for harriers as had been started for Kites, hoping presumably that the occasional wintering birds might stay to nest if given the chance. At Llanuwchllyn, near Bala, Bolam described the signboard of the inn, called The Eagles. On it, he said, ‘the King of Birds is represented by three very dove-like harriers in pursuit of a hare’. He thought this was the work of a local artist. Perhaps the artist had witnessed at least one harrier attacking a hare. Sadly, when Graham Williams
visited the inn in 1975, no trace of the sign survived.

  The Outer Hebrides, Orkney and the South of Ireland deserve special historical attention as the three regions where continuity of breeding was maintained.

  Back in 1841, Macgillivray had said that the Hen Harrier was rather abundant in the Outer Hebrides, especially in the Uists. Macgillivray’s homeland was Harris and he must have known whether harriers bred in the Long Island; unfortunately there is much doubt whether there were ever many there—the statement by a Mr Greenwood that it was ‘tolerably abundant’ at Stornoway in 1879, quoted by Robert Gray, is not confirmed by later writers. Dr J. W. Campbell (1957) wrote that it survived on well-keepered ground in the southern islands and evidently considered it absent from Harris and Lewis, as a nesting bird, because voles were absent. Voles are plentiful in the Outer Hebrides south of Harris and, with rabbits, probably form a major prey item for the breeding pairs. Quite clearly the Clamhan Luch’s survival was partly due to the view that it was not a serious predator on game birds, aided by the fact that keepers and their employers were much less concerned with grouse than wildfowl. Most importantly, some landowners had a genuine desire to preserve harriers.

  I have already quoted Gray’s description of a pair of Hen Harriers in North Uist. He wrote further that he had seen ‘12 or 14 in one day on Benbecula and North Uist and likewise on South Uist’. This passage has often been taken as evidence that numbers were much higher in those islands about 1870 than in the early 20th century, but there is no certainty of a big decrease. Very likely Gray’s high numbers were seen in late summer, when broods were newly on the wing, and they cannot be taken as evidence that there were great numbers of pairs. It was probably no less plentiful in 1901 when C. V. A. Peel said the bird was ‘very common, especially in the southern islands and Benbecula’. That nesting took place long ago on the same heathery hills as today is witnessed by a reference (1918) in a diary by Abel Chapman’s brother, Alfred, to the finding of a nest close to Mount Unavall in North Uist in May 1883. N. B. Kinnear, in 1906, said: ‘a few pairs nest and are now strictly protected in the Uists’. P. H. Bahr saw a nest with young in 1907 and added: ‘I am glad to report that the keeper, acting on instructions from headquarters, did not attempt to shoot the old birds and spared the life of their offspring’.

  It is pleasing to be able to add that in 1950, and again in 1974, I found keepers in those benign islands continuing to ‘spare’ the Hen Harrier. F. M. Ogilvie (1920) saw seven or eight in a day on his winter visits to the Outer Hebrides between 1900 and 1914, and noted, most interestingly, that adult males outnumbered ‘females’ (? ringtails) by five to one. The evidence for a decline seems to be based chiefly on F. S. Beveridge’s account of his observations, 1917–18. He said it was still fairly common and resident though in greatly diminished numbers, but as his visits seem to have been in winter this cannot be taken as proof of a large decrease in breeding birds. Rintoul and Baxter did not quote their reasons for saying there had been a marked decline, in 1953. Soon after this, in 1957, Jimmy Campbell, who visited the islands for many years, said the ‘present trend is towards increase’.

  I believe that in the Outer Isles—North and South Uist, Benbecula and Barra—unlike anywhere else in the country, the numbers of breeding Hen Harriers may not have changed dramatically throughout the past hundred years. Any decline earlier in this century may have been due to the activities of egg collectors more than to any other cause. It was remarkable and of great importance for the birds’ survival that the tide of destruction by game preservers stopped short only 15 miles across the Minch in Skye. Perhaps, indeed, old memories of the Clamhan Luch as a bird of good omen, boding success in marital and money matters, were not without influence among the islanders.

  Historically, there are several references to show that the Hen Harrier bred plentifully in Orkney during the 18th and 19th centuries. Baxter and Rintoul cite Low’s statement that, in 1774, it was frequent all the year round, and Harvie-Brown and Buckley in 1891 considered it ‘probably the commonest hawk throughout the islands’. A parallel may, possibly, be drawn between Orkney and Shetland on the one hand and the southern and northern Outer Hebrides on the other. Orkney and the southern Outer Isles have long had both harriers and voles. Shetland and Lewis and Harris are without voles (Southern, 1964) and have no history of a flourishing nesting population of harriers. The evidence for a real decline in the early 20th century is stronger for Orkney than for the Outer Hebrides. There is no doubt that when John Walpole Bond was nest hunting in Orkney in 1907, there were quite a few pairs of Hen Harriers. He found four nests on one hill, at distances of about 500 metres between nests, but in 1914 he believed that the total number of breeding pairs had been reduced to two.

  Desmond Nethersole-Thompson, who went there in the 1930s, has given me his own vivid account of the Hen Harriers and their nest hunters in the Orkney scene between 1900 and the thirties: ‘By the turn of the century the bird-shooting trophy hunters had largely been replaced by an extraordinary group of nest hunters and egg collectors about whom more is known in myth and legend than in fact. In the next 15 years they advanced the sport of nest hunting almost to a science. In this period almost all that was known about the breeding biology of some of our rarer birds was based on their knowledge and observation. Among the outstanding egg collecting ornithologists who visited Orkney before the First World War, were John Walpole-Bond, Edgar Chance and Norman Gilroy. Jock Bond, who was a friend of mine, spent a spring and summer in Orkney in 1907. His essays on the Hen Harrier and the Short-eared Owl in Field Studies of some Rarer British Birds (1914) were among his results. Bond was an exceptionally successful nest hunter and a remarkable field naturalist. He was an unusual character who always dressed like a tramp on his birding expeditions, but was inordinately proud of his social origins. A direct descendant of Sir Robert Walpole and a son of a Vicar of Horsham, Bond never ceased to mention that he had been to school at Winchester and rowed for St John’s College, Oxford. He was one of the nest hunters who could both search and watch and he was a quite exceptionally bold and courageous tree and rock climber who, in his time, climbed to over 200 Peregrine eyries.

  ‘In 1907 Edgar Chance had also been in Orkney. . . . Many considered that Norman Gilroy, a London timber buyer, was the most successful of all the contemporary nest hunters. Gilroy, who made several trips to Orkney, particularly after Hen Harriers, was a most devious character. He usually accepted the patronage of some rich man to pay the expenses of an egging trip and then concealed his trophies and complained that he had been out of luck! In one year a famous bird hunting Highland laird sent him to Orkney in advance to locate Hen Harriers’ nests for him. Gilroy had a curious habit of blowing the eggs and then leaving them to dry on the eiderdown of his bed. When the laird arrived Gilroy was out hunting the hills but the innkeeper directed him to the bedroom where he could not fail to notice a good clutch of Hen Harrier’s eggs drying out on the bed. On his return Gilroy promptly told his host that he had been right out of luck and had not even seen a harrier. A man of rectitude, integrity and spirit, the laird departed by the next boat, leaving Gilroy to foot his own bill.

  ‘In the pre-war and inter-war years many eggers crossed the Pentland Firth. These included the ship-builder, Sir Maurice Denny, who took Gilroy to Orkney. In 1924 Arthur Whitaker, the Sheffield architect, was there. He was another outstanding all-round field naturalist . . . and a most determined and almost obsessional hunter who died of a heart attack after spending a long day thrashing out a cornfield in Gloucester in a last hunt for the nest of a Quail, one of the few birds, the nest of which he had not found somewhere in the British Isles or in Ireland.

  ‘These were a few of the amateur eggers and hunters from south of the border. But wherever they went, particularly in the haunts of rare and attractive birds, they almost always had “link men” to advise, guide and spy out the land in advance. Some of these were remarkable self-taught ornithologists, of whom there were several
in Orkney. In the early 1900s and in the last years of the 19th century, J. R. Gunn, the Kirkwall taxidermist, corresponded with a wide circle of English ornithologists who included Richard Kearton, the pioneer photographer. Those who knew Gunn told me that he had agents in every part of Orkney and that he frequently supplied the wants of collectors in the field and by post. For the first 40 years of the century and before Eddie Balfour was in his prime, John Douglas, a cattle farmer at Howe in Harray, was undoubtedly the greatest expert on Hen Harriers in Britain.