Pointless demise of Cork’s Heather the Hen Harrier

HEATHER was a female hen harrier, she was also the star of an online blogspot with around a quarter of a million followers.

It all started in 2013 when, soon after she hatched near Duhallow in Co Cork, she was fitted with a satellite tracking device. This was done to learn more about hen harriers, which are an endangered bird of prey. The Irish population has shrunk to below 100 pairs.

Her movements were not only studied by ornithologists, they were followed by large numbers of the general public. People became fascinated by the emerging story of a young bird of prey travelling the country, searching for food and maybe, eventually, for a mate.

Sadly that was never to happen because a couple of weeks ago Heather was shot dead in the Waterville area of Co Kerry. This was illegal and utterly pointless. Hen harriers, although their name suggests they might pose a threat to poultry, are in fact harmless birds. Quite a lot of research has been done on their diet. It consists mainly of meadow pipits, starlings and skylarks along with some small mammals up to the size of rabbits and young hares. They never attack lambs.

They are so rare that a number of their breeding sites around the country have been declared Special Areas of Conservation. This EU designation involves some restrictions on land use and this has given rise to resentment among some land owners.

Whether the reason Heather was shot was because of this resentment is only speculation. A number of white-tailed eagles have also been shot and poisoned in the same part of Kerry. Someone around there obviously doesn’t like large birds of prey. I wonder if that person realises what Heather’s death means to hundreds of thousands of people, many of them national school children, who followed her blog.

In the old days hen harriers were regularly shot by farmers, gamekeepers and people out snipe shooting who thought they’d look nice in a glass case. But attitudes changed and the people with guns started to appreciate that they were beautiful and harmless birds. Unfortunately the heathery expanses that the birds prefer also changed due to drainage, turf cutting and over-grazing.

There was a brief respite in the second half of the last century when many upland bogs were planted with conifers in state forestry schemes. The young plantations suited hen harriers, providing concealment for their nests and hunting grounds with more birds and small mammals than in the open heather. There was a brief increase in numbers. But as the forestry matured it became less suitable for them and then a new threat was posed by wind farms. And it seems the old threat of the gunman hasn’t totally disappeared.