Willow – a young female marsh harrier was satellite tagged at a nest containing two chicks in the county of Moray in the north west of Scotland. For the first six weeks the young female harrier ranged in the general area of the breeding site, and was more often close to the nest site probably because she was dominant
September 25, 2012
At 1pm on 20th September Willow was just SW of Forres and then passed Lochindorb to spend that evening by the River Dulnain east of Carrbridge. At 11am on 21st she was heading through the Cairngorms at Glen Einich and at 3pm was on the Forth south of Alloa. She roosted that night just north of Crawfordjohn. On the 22nd she was on the peninsula at Whithorn from 2pm to 9pm.
October 4, 2012
Willow’s last location was close to Whithorn at 10.45pm on 22nd September and there have been no signals since. We are afraid that the most likely reason is that she has been killed bearing in mind the serious illegal persecution of harriers. We hope we are wrong and that her transmitter suddenly bursts back into life. The complete story of Willow’s short life including the migration map accross the Higlands south can be followed here.
Firstly, dreadful news indeed. I hope they catch the culprits.
I’m not going to be terribly popular here (open debate) but it’s something playing on my mind, particular as we are speaking about a species with a rare breeding record in Moray.
I don’t understand why one would satellite tag a very rare breeder to this county. Certainly if it was a nest I had found and was monitoring, I’d think twice about doing this, since in no way would I want to disturb future breeding, particularly to such a rare ‘breeder’. In my mind I’d hope that the Harriers established themselves and more than a 10+ pairs were present, only then would I look at tagging one nest.
Now, obviously tagging does enable tracking the birds and what happens to them and in many cases exposes just how rife the persecution is, but rather than tag one known Marsh Harrier site, why not tag Buzzards, since I bet a lot of information would come out of that and perhaps show even more how widespread persecution is.
It just seems to me, that it appears to be vogue up here to tag the rarer BoP but at what consequences….