French Monties reaches Scotland

We recently blogged news of a French-ringed Montagu's Harrier seen in East Anglia (the first post is here). The story has developed somewhat since then, with sightings in Cambridgeshire and also possibly in South Yorkshire and Lincolnshire.

The most bizarre, though, was the record yesterday (22nd June) from Collieston, Aberdeenshire, in eastern Scotland! The bird was only seen briefly, but long enough to have its wing tags read. Some non-breeding birds will wander around prospecting nest sites, but at two years old you wonder when this bird will settle, and where!

The map below shows this bird's movements to date...


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Montagu's magic!

On 28 April a friend rang me with the news that he was watching a wing-tagged female Montagu's Harrier in the Horsey area of northeast Norfolk. Even better, he'd been able to read the tags - left wing: black 0 on yellow, right wing: black 0 on green. As the story unfolded, it transpired that the bird had first been seen the day before at Dunwich, Suffolk, but identified as a Hen Harrier. It was seen regularly during the week, finding its way back to Minsmere by 3 May, where Jon Evans managed to capture some interesting images:

With a bit of help from their friends, the Ringing Team quickly tracked down this individual's origin - it was ringed and tagged as a nestling on 18 July 2008 in Villeneuve, France, 817 kilometres south of Horsey.

This is only the third foreign-ringed Montagu's Harrier to be found in the UK. The first was way back in the 1920s; a chick ringed in the Netherlands in June 1928 was reported (in unknown circumstances) in Suffolk a year later. The second was an unfortunate individual found freshly dead on a road at Invershin in Highland, Scotland on 7 October 2002, just 60 days after it was ringed as a nestling in France.

The map below shows just how close the origin of this week's bird was to that of the Scottish recovery.


View Montagu's Harriers in a larger
map