46 THE BIRDS OF NORTHAMPTONSHIRE 



14. HEN-HARRIER. 



Circus cyaneus. 



This is another of the many species which has been 

 " improved " out of the country by the drainage of 

 fen-lands, and perhaps still more by the enclosure and 

 cultivation of the great stretches of furze and sedge- 

 covered commons in which it delighted. I am not 

 acquainted with a single instance of the death or 

 capture of a bird of this species in Northamptonshire, 

 but few autumns pass without my seeing at least one 

 in this neighbourhood, and it is somewhat remarkable 

 that, of perhaps twenty that I have observed here- 

 abouts, I can only call to mind two which were not 

 in the ash-grey plumage of the adult male. I have 

 several times heard from the gamekeepers of their 

 having seen a " Sea-Gull-coloured Hawk," and the 

 Hen-Harrier certainly nested in my boyhood on some 

 rough sedgy fields in the neighbourhood of Clapton. 

 In the aforesaid grey plumage, and beating backwards 

 and forwards over an open field, as is its habit, it is 

 a conspicuous bird, and not likely to escape notice, 

 but with the exception of the vague gamekeeper's 

 account above mentioned, a note from Lady Mary 

 Thompson of the former occurrence of the species 

 near Milton, and an instance of its having been seen 

 by Mr. G. Edmonds near Oundle about thirteen years 

 ago, 1 have no local information on record concerning 

 it. I have met with the Hen-Harrier in Devonshire, 

 Norfolk, Scotland, Ireland, Wales, and various foreign 

 countries, but nowhere in such abundance as in 

 Northern Spain, in the neighbourhood of Santander, 

 a country of open, undulating, rushy and furze-grown 



