Richard Collins: Working to make these raptors welcome

The pale-grey male Hen Harrier is known as ‘the seagull hawk’ in the west of Ireland — they get their name from raiding chicken coops but they also feed on small mammals and birds

Hen Harrier: Centuries of persecution, followed by pesticide poisoning, took a huge toll on Irish birds of prey. The National Hen Harrier Survey 2022 should give us an idea how they are faring now

If you spot what looks like a gull wheeling low over a bog, don’t be fooled. Are the wings held in a shallow ‘V’, when it glides? If so, the bird is probably a hen harrier. The pale-grey male is known as ‘the seagull hawk’ in the west of Ireland.

This chicken-coop-raiding harrier, ‘gets its name among our countrymen for butchering their fowls’ wrote William Turner, ‘the father of English botany’, in 1544. Females, dark brown with conspicuous white rumps, are called ‘ringtails’. The sexes are so unlike that even the great Francis Willoughby thought that they belonged to different species.