Montagu's harrier bred successfully for the second year running at a secret English farmland location, where a male known as AU reared six chicks across two nests. The RSPB said two of the chicks were fitted with satellite tags for the first time, giving it a way to follow where they go next.
Mark Thomas, head of investigations at the RSPB, said the tags will help work out migration route, time spent away and whether the birds return to the UK in the first year or the second year. "It will allow us for the first time ever to work out where they're going, what migration route, how long they'll spend there, and will they come back to the UK in the first year or the second year" he said.
Mark Thomas and AU
Thomas also said, "All of that information is the bit that's missing from the jigsaw." The RSPB said six flying juveniles were seen this year, after four chicks hatched at the same secret location last year. AU bred with two different females, producing the six chicks across two nests.
The species is still on the UK red list after being put there in 2021. Numbers fell from a high of nine successful nests in 2011 to no evidence of successful breeding between 2020 and 2024, so the return of nesting at the same site adds a rare data point for a bird that has struggled to maintain breeding success in the UK.
English farmland nests
The nests were protected by fences to keep out ground predators such as foxes, while the birds nested on the ground among crops. Thomas said, "The harvest here, for example, this year, was like a month earlier than in previous years." He added, "So it almost puts any Montagu's harrier nest at the peril of inadvertently being destroyed by farm machinery".
Montagu's harriers migrate to Africa in winter and return to Europe to nest over summer. The satellite-tagged chicks give the RSPB its first chance to track those journeys from this site, and the unanswered part is whether the pair of juveniles will come back to the UK in their first year or their second year.
Birders were urged to report sightings to the RSPB's Montagu's hotline at montys@.
