92 British Birds, with their Nests and Eggs 



Family— FA L CONID^. Gcmis— CIR C US. 



The Harriers. 



THK Harriers are birds of singular appearance, having slight bodies, long and 

 much rounded wings, long tails, long and slender legs, and round heads, 

 with a distinctly indicated ruff on the lower sides of the face, and as they have 

 also large ears and soft and rather downy plumage, they appear to form a con- 

 necting link between the Owls and Buzzards. The bill is short and attenuated, 

 with the dorsal line sloping to beyond the cere, then decurved, the edge of the 

 upper mandible with a slight festoon ; nostrils large, ovate or oblong, with an oblique 

 ridge ; tarsi feathered on the uppermost part, scutellate before and behind ; claws 

 long, curved, and sharply pointed ; irides yellow in adult males, hazel in young 

 and females. 



The Harriers are distributed all over the world, with the sole exception of 

 the Malay iVrchipelago, and the extreme north and south ; fifteen species are 

 known, four only are Buropean, and of these three occur in the British Isles ; they 

 are denizens of moors, heaths, downs, and swamps, avoiding woods. They roost 

 and nest upon the ground. They derive their name from their harrying small 

 birds and mammals, for which they beat low over the ground with a buoyant 

 flight, regularly quartering it like a setter, dropping doAvn upon their prey like 

 an Owl. They are migratory birds, coming north to nest, and returning south in 

 the autumn ; both the Marsh- and Hen-Harriers are to be found in this country 

 in the winter ; these are birds wintering with us from further north ; adults of 

 the Hen-Harrier are more common in the British Isles during the winter months 

 than at any other time of the year. All the Harriers are great stealers of other 

 birds' eggs, besides being remorseless devourers of young birds. They also prey 

 upon reptiles, insects, rats, mice, young rabbits and leverets, and upon water-fowl 

 and young partridges and grouse. Drainage of fens, reclamation of waste grounds, 

 railways, game-preserving, the " collector," have all been agents in their exter- 

 mination as native birds, and to-day they are only known in the greater part of 

 the kingdom as chance visitors on passage, and it is only in the most remote and 

 wildest districts that any of them may now be successful in rearing a brood ; the 

 nest, placed upon the ground, is easily to be discovered, and when found it is 

 thought a meritorious act both by shepherds and keepers to trample upon the 



