A pair of Montagu\u2019s harriers have raised four chicks in an English wheat field, the first success for Britain\u2019s rarest breeding bird since 2019.<\/p>\n
The fledglings took their maiden flights this week after being closely monitored by the RSPB and the local farmer, with a protective wire-mesh fence installed around the nest to repel predators such as foxes.<\/p>\n
The location is being kept secret because it is private farmland, but also to enable the young birds to feed up and grow in strength without disturbance from over-enthusiastic birders.<\/p>\n
The Montagu\u2019s harrier<\/a> has long been a rare species in Britain<\/a> but after a recent high of nine successful nests in 2011 its population has dwindled, with no fledging successes for six summers.<\/p>\n The migratory raptor overwinters in sub-Saharan Africa before heading north to nest in Europe, often in arable fields. In recent decades its nests have been accidentally destroyed by agricultural intensification<\/a>, such as mechanised harvesting and crop-spraying, as well as breeding birds struggling in wetter summers.<\/p>\n In its remaining strongholds, such as France and Spain, many nests in cereal fields are protected from ground-nesting predators by installing temporary small metal fences around them.<\/p>\n The pair were first spotted in May and closely monitored by a local volunteer and the RSPB, with a drone being used under licence to locate the nest. Once the youngsters hatched, the nest was protected with fencing earlier this month.<\/p>\n Mark Thomas, the species lead for Montagu\u2019s harriers at the RSPB and an expert in protecting vulnerable birds of prey<\/a>, said: \u201cWe are overjoyed that a pair have returned, they managed to find each other and through the close protection of a dedicated farmer and the RSPB have managed to raise four youngsters.\u201d<\/p>\n The farmer, who is not named to protect the location, said: \u201cIt\u2019s fantastic to have these amazing birds on the farm and a just reward for the extensive conservation work we have been undertaking for decades.\u201d<\/p>\n skip past newsletter promotion<\/a><\/p>\n The planet’s most important stories. Get all the week’s environment news – the good, the bad and the essential<\/p>\n Privacy Notice: Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. For more information see our Privacy Policy<\/a>. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy<\/a> and Terms of Service<\/a> apply.<\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n Adult harriers are often site-faithful, raising hopes they may return to the same spot next summer.<\/p>\n Rings on the parent birds have revealed that the male is a long-lived bird from a British nest in 2015, while the female fledged from a French nest in 2023.<\/p>\n Thomas added: \u201cThis Anglo-French alliance could just be the springboard needed to save this species in Britain.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A pair of Montagu\u2019s harriers have raised four chicks in an English wheat field, the first success for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":33260,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[64,63,75,128],"class_list":["post-33259","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-environment","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33259","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33259"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33259\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33260"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33259"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33259"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33259"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}