Now the monitoring season has come to an end, I find myself missing the dance of the hen harrier.
Gadfa, RSPB Lake Vyrnwy (photo by Gethin Elias)
It’s always hard to get people to understand what we do as work between March and early August. We sit for four hours monitoring moorland birds. The common answer to that is “anybody could do that, what’s the point?”
It feels like a common thing in Britain not to realise that there is a strong possibility that some of our upland birds may become extinct in my lifetime. My job is to find nests, find out how many eggs are laid, how many chicks hatch and finally how many leave the nest. This process can mean sitting in freezing cold conditions for four hours and not seeing a single bird, but still having the focus to keep on looking. But we do also have the best job in the world when the weather is perfect.
North Wales Moors in winter (photo by Gethin Elias)
Sitting in solitude amongst the purply brown heather, a light breeze whispers in my ear, the early sun warms the ground and there is not a cloud in the sky. Gazing across the valley below is a complicated patchwork of greens: fields, patches of woodland and a few farms. In front of me rolling heather intertwined with apple green and red sphagnum. Delicate heads of nodding carex limosa (bog sedge) shiver in the breeze and sticky droplets glisten on the ends of round leaved sundew leaves. Sky larks and meadow pipits sing in glorious melody. A golden ringed dragonfly darts past and world feels at rest with itself.
North Wales Moors in summer (photo by Gethin Elias)
Above, chattering to himself, a male hen harrier dances; a ghostly grey with black wing tips, golden talons and piercing yellow eyes. Up and down he goes and I know that I am very privileged to be sitting here watching this magnificent bird dance. After a while he stops and goes off to hunt, he returns in half an hour with food only to pass it to the female in mid air. This is what we call a food pass, the female will briefly turn upside down to take food from the male.
A page from my notebook.
I become very attached to these birds as if they are a family member. The joy and the relief this year when they managed to fledge some young brought me to tears of happiness. I wish them all the luck in the world as they will need it if they are to return to the purple moors of North Wales.
This year I found five nests and they fledged twelve chicks.
Gethin Elias, Migneint Warden
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