I am pleased to present a guest blog from Mick Demain, the RSPB's seasonal assistant warden in Bowland for the last few years, reflecting on his last few years monitoring harriers
Being the seasonal warden for the RSPB in Bowland means I am privileged to be working with raptors every day and undoubtedly the hen harrier is the star species.
Over the years there have been many highs and lows. The 2011 season had been just like many others with success and some failure so as the 2012 season got under way I had no reason to think that this would be any different, but as the weeks passed I realised that the unthinkable was about to happen, we were to have no breeding harriers since they returned in the 1960s.
You’ll probably know that 2013 was even worse with not a single successful breeding attempt in England. The species was now on the brink, the next step was to become extinct as a breeding species.
So as the 2014 season got underway I had little reason to be optimistic as I drove up the estate tracks into the hills, however it soon became apparent that we may have a chance. The winter had been mild and the voles were in very high numbers, the grouse count had been the highest for twenty years and the pipits would soon be flooding in.
In early March I had my first sighting of a harrier at a known site, this was a female and although she stayed only for a few minutes it was a start. By mid April she was back with a male and we were delighted when it soon became apparent that there would be a breeding attempt at this site. By the end of the month we had identified seven individual harriers at three sites including two adult males in their beautiful silver grey plumage. One of these then settled with a female one mile distant from the first pair.
The remaining birds never paired up and eventually left the area but had someone offered me two pairs at the start of the season I would have gladly taken it!
2014 has been a great success with two pairs in Bowland and a third at another site, we can all bask in the glory of a good job done but we must not become complacent for this is only the start. This is where the recovery begins.