As normal with Heather and Miranda, Golden Eagle seen at Hen Harrier roost this weekend

Hen Harrier and Short-eared Owl, both share similar habitats

Heather and Miranda are still at their respective territories in Cork and Mayo. Both travel up to 10km each day from their roost in search of food, often tracing the same flights on different days. They know where the best places are for hunting and they know where the safest spots are for sleeping each night. They have both done very well in their first winters to have survived, especially considering the memorable storms and rainfall that we have had over the past couple of months.

Over the weekend a Golden Eagle was seen at a roost in North County Clare. Over the years, every single Irish bird of prey has been seen by volunteers on the Irish Hen Harrier Winter Survey. Whether our smallest bird of prey, the Merlin, plucking a single starling out of a murmuration of 5000, a Marsh Harrier flapping over potential prey in the reeds, a Short-eared Owl quartering a bog or a White-tailed Sea Eagle perched high on a tree, there have been some spectacular and memorable moments on the survey over the years, and much interesting and important information gained.

Wing Tagged Birds provide really interesting info!

A young male, wing tagged in West Clare in 2008

Wing Tagging began in Ireland in 2006 as a pilot project between the National Parks & Wildlife Service and the Irish Raptor Study Group. Since then much has been learned from simple colours on the birds, identifying what year they were born, where they were born and which individual they are. More on wing tagging can be found on this blog by clicking here: Wing Tagging

Over the weekend, three sightings of wing tagged Hen Harriers have come to light. One of a bird born in the Slieve Blooms in 2013, now at South Wexford after arriving with a companion to add to two other harriers that have been at the roost all winter long. The interesting thing about this is that another roost in North Wexford, which has held 2 harriers heretofore, including a 2013 Slieve Blooms wing tagged bird, now apparently has no harriers. So did the two from the North Wexford roost travel together to the South Wexford roost? This is highly possible if not indeed likely and would lend further credence to the hypothesis that Heather our satellite tagged bird from Kerry, travelled from Northern Ireland to South Cork with a colleague (see previous posts in September 2013).

Another very exciting potential find through wing tags came from Scotland, where what sounds like a female Hen Harrier with a left green tag was seen near Glasgow. As with all sightings, quality control was applied and there is a very good chance that this indeed was a Hen Harrier from Ireland, wing tagged in 2008. In 2008, a female from West Clare was seen in NE Antrim and again in SW Scotland so is this the same individual?

Finally, Heather and Miranda are still at their home ranges in Cork and Mayo respectively. Lets hope for an improvement in the weather. It is very tough for all widlife.

Spring is here! ...ish

Spring is here...

well technically it's here! Driving a 4x4 through the flooded roads around the Burren this evening was great fun as I winded my way towards a roost site. The roost site, naturally, was almost completely flooded also. However, there was a patch of reeds that were slightly elevated and this is where I watched a male and a female Hen Harrier return to spend the night, surrounded by Mallard, Grey Herons, Swans and Water Rail. A sparrowhawk hunting small birds added some further spark to the evening at this wonderful wetland site.

So many people turned out across the country over the weekend for the co-ordinated winter roost watch date (IHHWS) and had their own similar experiences, making the most of what this time of the year has to offer before it all changes again. Of course if you were unable to get to your local roost or to check for new roosts, you still have time to do so for this month and for next month.

Heather and Miranda, our satellite tracked stars are still in Cork and Mayo respectively. Heather was today hunting a new area 6km SE of her roost. She typically uses a 10km radius of an area for hunting and this information is vitally important to learn about the habitat use of a young Hen Harrier.

Come this time next month please God we'll be still following Heather and Miranda but who knows by then where they will be!

Spring will be well and truly here by then!

See http://www.clare.fm/flood for what a Hen Harrier's eye view of the Burren today

Heather - A day in the life. Irish Hen Harrier Winter Survey February Watch

 

 

 

 

Heather started out this morning in Glengarriff and continued east until back in more familiar territory 

 

Heather left her North Cork roost over the weekend - she returned to her South Cork coast roost where she had been from September to mid December. This morning (21 January), Heather gets up from roost in Glengarriff, right on the west Coast of Cork, the best part of 100km from where she was on Sunday! When she gets up and starts travelling east, she does not stop. She keeps going. Clocking up 145km in straight line distance in just a few hours, to go where? Right back to where she started in the first place - North Cork. Without the satellite tag data we would have had no idea of the extraordinary movements of this single extraordinary young female Hen Harrier, even in the space of a day.

 

 

This goes to show the importance of conducting roost watches in a co-ordinated way, on the day if possible, so that we do not double count the same bird in different locations and so that we can determine if there are movements of birds between roosts.

 

So, lets all give it one big effort on the 1st of February for next month's coordinated roost watch date!

 

That is a Saturday. Try your best to get out to your nearest roost on the Friday, Saturday or Sunday.

 

February has traditionally seen a peak of activity at roosts and is of course one of the last opportunities many of us will get to see Hen Harriers in our locality before they return to their territories for the breeding season.

Just when you think you're getting to know Hen Harriers, they show you how much is yet to be learned

After many priviliged years of watching and working with Hen Harriers since a young age, the only thing that this blogger can say for sure about this magnificent and often enigmatic species is:

"Never say never and never say always!"



A male Hen Harrier glides gracefully at a winter roost in Kerry as a surveyor looks on in search of harriers!
Hen Harriers continuously show us how much we have yet to learn about them

 This weekend saw visits to the farmers that look after the fields that Heather hunts on a daily basis, catching rats and mice in amongst the stubble fields and oil seed rape. It was important to let the farmers know all about Heather's amazing travels since she left her nest in Kerry last summer, visiting so many different places since including Wicklow, Meathe, Lough Neagh, South Cork and more. Oftentimes, scientific conservation research can leave the most important factor out of the equation - the person who looks after the habitat. In this case, it was also important to see if the farmers could adopt a safe practice in regard to rodent control around the farm. This is just one of the many applications to which the satellite data derived from Heather's tag can be put to direct consaervation use.

After visiting the farmers, it was off to an elevated vantage point in the mountains to see if we could see her come into roost as she has done night after night for the past month. Four of the finest volunteers on the Irish Hen Harrier Winter Survey watched in anticipation of her slender wings held in a shallow 'v' shape glide into roost. Waiting, waiting waiting... Heather did not appear, nor did any of the 4-5 other harriers that have joined her here since she arrived over a month ago. So where was she? Where were they all? How did they all decide that on this particular night, they would roost elsewhere? We have so much to learn.

Just how much we have yet to learn was brought right home when the satellite data from Heather's tag came in that evening. She was back at her roost on the south coast of Cork, over 50km away! She spent 3 months here from September to December, but had opted to travel further north to where she has spent the past month. So why the turn around? Will she stay at her roost in South Cork? Will she move on again? Have the others joined her? Heather's travels continue to astound!

Go on Heather!! :-)

It is funny to think that the intrepid four travelled some distance to see Heather, yet all the time she was very close to the homes of three of the surveyors back in South Cork!

Heather and Miranda survive the storms

Both Heather and Miranda are still at their home ranges in North Cork and North West Mayo respectively.

The weather since the Christmas period has been shockingly bad, with stormy wet weather surely not helping matters for Hen Harriers.

It is interesting to see Heather's daily hunting routine, travelling from her roost in a mountain area dominated by forestry to hunt an area of tillage fields approximately 6km away - clearly preferring this to what surrounds her in her roost. Perhaps if the roost which was once all heather moorland was not planted with forestry, Heather would not have to travel as far to find food. The pressures on the uplands are being shown by Heather's movements. Miranda uses the blanket bogs of NW Mayo daily to find food.

Scoil Ruáin of Killenaule, Co. Tipperary made it to the main event of the BT Young Scientist Competition 2014. An interview with Lee Warner who undertook this socio-economic appraisal of what is happening in the Hen Harrier Special Protection Areas can be heard at Hen Harrier interview at the BT Young Scientist Finals, RDS, Dublin, 2014

Happy New Year! 14 HEN HARRIERS AT ONE ROOST! Heather and Miranda in Cork and Mayo. Irish Mail on Sunday Feature. 2013 round up.

Happy New Year to all readers and followers of the Hen Harrier Ireland blog!

So - who wants to do a roost watch? Please get out there and you could be rewarded with amazing sights like that in the photo below, taken by a contributor to the Irish Hen Harrier Winter Survey

8 of the 14 Hen Harriers at roost on 27 December 2013.  Are 7 females chasing that one male?! Photo by Paul Kelly

14 Hen Harriers in the air together at this roost!! That breaks the previous record of 12 birds at another roost - wonderful stuff!! How amazing is this?! Awesome. Why not get out there and watch your local roost or look for a new roost in your locality? Contact harriers@ahg.gov.ie if you would like to contribute to the survey.

Happy to report that Heather and Miranda are well. Heather is still in North Cork and making good use of tillage fields and hedgerows along the Blackwater Valley - the very river which she was born near in Summer 2013! Miranda's tag transmitted accurate locational data for the first time in a month and she is in the very same part of Mayo as where we last had information for. It is a great joy to have seen both birds make it to the end of their first calendar year and in just another couple of days we can refer to these beauties as second calendar year females!!

The full page article by Warren Swords in yesterday's Irish Mail on Sunday (click to enlarge)

Heather and Miranda were featured prominently in yesterday's Irish Mail on Sunday, by journalist Warren Swords. The article also focussed on the conservation of Hen Harriers in Ireland and the research and dissemination of information that is helping these conservation efforts, including the Irish Hen Harrier Winter Survey and this website.

Thank you to all the readers and followers of this blog in 2013. It has been a big year. The breeding season was particularly poor, with most nests unable to rare any young despite the best efforts of the parents. However we have had some heartening days in following the progress of Heather as she travelled around Ireland and of course Miranda a most welcome addition from Scotland. We all look forward to following their progress in 2014 and that of all the other Hen Harriers throughout Ireland. Thank you for your records, effort and continued support and good will towards this, one of Ireland's most threatened and amazing birds.