HEN-HARRIER. 
139 
127. Circus cy aliens, Hen-Harrier. 
Blue Hawk. Ring-Tail. 
Now a winter visitor to most parts of the county 
and Isle of Wight, but occasionally remaining to nest. 
Formerly resident. 
The following passages from Gilbert White's "Selborne" 
are sufficient to prove that it was a well-known resident 
in Hampshire in those days — " Hen-harriers fly low over 
heaths or fields of corn, and beat the ground regularly 
like a pointer or setting-dog." ^ 
" Mr. White, of Newton," — no doubt his nephew Edward, 
rector of Newton Valence — " sprung a pheasant in a wheat 
stubble and shot at it ; when, notwithstanding the report 
of the gun, it was immediately pursued by the blue hawk, 
known by the name of the hen-harrier, but escaped into 
some covert. He then sprung a second, and third, in 
the same field, that got away in the same manner ; the 
hawk hovering round him all the while that he was beating 
the field, conscious, no doubt, of the game that lurked in 
the stubble." ^ 
Montagu, writing to White in 1789, says: "I am at 
a loss for your blue pigeon-hawk^ especially as you say 
its female is brown ; from its place of resort I should 
conceive it to be the hen-harrier, and that you had 
not corrected the mistake of other ornithologists, and 
which Pennant fell into in his first edition, where he 
gave the ring- tail for its female." In this matter White 
was correct and Montagu wrong, though Yarrell gives 
the credit of the discovery to the Devonshire naturalist. 
* Letter xlii. to Barrington. Selborne. August 7th, 1778. 
* "Observations on Birds." 
