FALCONIDE. 317 
THE HEN-HARRIER. 
Circus cyANeus (Linnzeus). 
The Hen-Harrier frequents higher and less marshy ground than 
the preceding species, and although it used to breed in (or on the 
rising ground above) the fen-district of Eastern England, before the 
spread of agricultural improvements, it was probably never common 
there, Montagu’s Harrier being often mistaken for it. Of late years 
its numbers have been so far thinned by game-preservers that in 
England and Wales it is now only to be found nesting on a few of 
the wildest and most extensive moorlands and wastes. Even in Scot- 
land and its islands, where this Harrier was formerly numerous, it is 
rapidly decreasing as a breeding-species ; but young birds are some- 
times fairly abundant as migrants in autumn, when the adults also 
come down from the moors to the lowlands, and the male (sometimes 
called “the Goshawk ”) attracts attention by his pale grey plumage. 
These remarks apply equally to Ireland. Few—and those chiefly 
adults—are to be met with in the British Islands during winter. 
In Scandinavia and Northern Russia the Hen-Harrier is found in 
summer about as far north as lat. 69°, though rare near that limit ; 
and it is only south of 62° that it becomes at all numerous in the 
