92 BRITISH BIRDS, WITH THEIR NESTS AND Eccs 
Family—FALCONIDA:. Genus—CIRCUS. 
THE HARRIERS. 
HE 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 Archipelago, and the extreme north and south; fifteen species are 
known, four only are European, 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 down 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 
