186 BIRDS OF DUMFRIESSHIRE 
moors, where it bred, but the systematic persecution 
it received from gamekeepers and preservers of game, 
exterminated this once common resident ; though doubtless 
the improvement in agriculture and drainage have de- 
stroyed many attractive haunts. In the neighbouring 
county of Ayr it is recorded that between June 25th, 1850, 
and November 25th, 1854, three hundred and fifty-one 
" Ash-coloured Hawks " were killed by Lord Ailsa's keepers 
on his estate.* What birds could stand such persecution ? 
Mr. Tom Crosbie, who is now a man of seventy-eight, tells 
me he remembers usually seeing these birds every winter 
till about 1883, in which year he shot one at Holmhill 
(Morton), and the following spring he saw a pair not far 
from Tibbers (Penpont) flying west. 
A Hen-Harrier, believed to have been a female, was shot 
on the Kerr Moss below Moffat by Mr. Campbell in the 
winter of 1905-1906 ; and Mr. Kerss, the keeper at Craigie- 
lands, told my mformant Mr. J. Bartholomew, that he had 
seen these birds occasionally in Eskdalemuir some years 
ago, and that at a more remote date they used to nest up 
Ewes Water, on Meikledale or Burnfoot. Mr. J. Little 
writes me that two were shot on Archbank Moor (Moffat) 
in September, 1896. 
The Hen-Harrier visits the basin of the Mediterranean, 
north-east Africa, and as far south as Abyssinia, India 
and China in its winter-migrations. It breeds in central 
Europe, extending further north in its breeding-range than 
the preceding species ; while it still nests very locally in 
Ireland, in the Hebrides, Orkneys and Shetlands, and more 
rarely in the Highlands of Scotland, and in England. 
[MONTAGU'S HARRIER. Circus cineraceus (Montagu). 
Mr. R. Service records in his diary on November 15th, 
1886, that WiUiam Hastings told him he had a bird to 
* Birds of Ayr, 1869, p. 11. 
