THE HARRIERS 101 



Scotland and Ireland it has greatly decreased during recent years. 

 A generation or so ago it nested annually, and in some numbers, on 

 the higher ground in many parts of England and Wales. 



The great disparity in size and coloration displayed by the two 

 sexes led the older ornithologists to share in the popular belief that 

 they represented distinct species, the female being known as the 

 "ring-tail." Montagu was the first to show that this was an error. 

 He definitely settled the matter by rearing a brood of them, of which 

 two proved to be females. The male was at first like the females in 

 coloration. By October of that year most of the plumage had 

 assumed the characteristic coloration of the male, but the change was 

 not completed until the autumn of the second year. 



While actually on the prowl for food, after the fashion of its tribe, 

 it quarters the ground like a pointer, keeping low down, and travel- 

 ling with steady heron-like flight, though turning sharply, like a kite, 

 with a twist of the tail. Sometimes, too, it will hover like a kestrel, 

 at others skim the ground like a grouse. St. John, in his delightful 

 Sports of the Highlands (p. 103), remarks of the method of hunting that 

 "as soon as the corn is cut it hunts the low country in most, d^tfetv- 

 mined fashion, flying at a few feet from the ground, and scouring 

 turnip-field after turnip-field, rushy field after rushy field. The 

 moment a bird is sighted it darts rapidly to a height of twenty feet or 

 more, hovers a moment, then comes down with unerring aim on its 

 victim, striking dead with a single blow either partridge or pheasant, 

 grouse or blackcock, showing a strength not to be expected from his 

 light figure and slender, though sharp talons. He saw a hen-harrier 

 strike at a "heath-hen" and cut off its head as clean as with a knife. 

 One day he was attended by a hen-harrier for some time, and this 

 bird struck down two hen-grouse which he had put up. He pays 

 special tribute to the bird, however, as a rat-killer, remarking that 

 from its habit of hunting very late in the evening around the rick- 

 yard many an incautious rat is caught up as the bird sweeps silently 

 round. But marsh and swamp are its favourite hunting-grounds, 



