UK’s rarest bird of prey rears new chicks in secret location

These slender, long-winged raptors make an epic annual migration to Africa in winter and return to Europe to nest over summer, often setting up home in agricultural fields.

But little is known about the behaviour of juvenile harriers once they leave the nest. This year, for the first time, the RSPB has fitted two of the chicks with satellite tags in the hope of providing the birds with better protection.

“It will allow us for the first time ever to work out where they’re going, what migration route, how long they’ll spend there, and will they come back to the UK in the first year or the second year,” said Mark Thomas, head of investigations at the RSPB.

“All of that information is the bit that’s missing from the jigsaw.”

It is also hoped the tagging can better protect the rare birds from having their nests, on the ground, hidden among crops, inadvertently destroyed.

“This is a species right on the brink, and climate change is not helping that. The harvest here, for example, this year, was like a month earlier than in previous years. So it almost puts any Montagu’s harrier nest at the peril of inadvertently being destroyed by farm machinery,” said Thomas.