24 HANDBOOK OF BRITISH BIRDS 



At that date in Lincolnshire barren moors or 

 commons, almost continuous, extending over ten 

 parishes, and great tracts of unproductive land, 

 afforded most congenial haunts for these birds. 

 Before the writer and his family could reach 

 their destination at the village of Usselby in 1821, 

 they had to descend from their carriages and 

 travel on foot through deep sand for three or 

 four miles. On one of these great commons — 

 Middle Rasen — there was considerably over sixty 

 acres of gorse, with here and there small open 

 spaces wherein the Hen Harriers built their nests. 

 On this common alone, to the writer's knowledge, 

 there were at least ten pairs of Harriers nesting 

 at one time (1824-25). They were regarded as 

 very destructive to game, and altogether no fewer 

 than fifty of these birds were captured in one year 

 on the Middle Rasen Moor. 



On the moorlands of North-East Yorkshire and 

 the carrs near Doncaster the Hen Harrier formerly 

 bred every year. The last reported nest was found 

 on the Danby Moors about 1850. None have been 

 seen there since 1860. (Atkinson, "Forty Years in 

 a Moorland Parish," p. 330.) In 1861, according to 

 Stevenson, a pair of Hen Harriers bred at Horsey, 

 Norfolk. In Huntingdonshire about that date Mr. 

 G. D. Rowley bought three eggs of this bird for 

 half-a-crown from a fen-man, named Charles Vessey, 

 at Ramsay. 



In May 1890 a nest with four eggs was taken 

 at Shawbury Heath, Shropshire, and together with 



