Willow’s last location was close to Whithorn at 1045pm on 22nd September and there have been no signals since.  We are afraid that the most likely reason is that shw has been killed bearing in mind the serious illegal persecution of harriers.  We hope we are wrong and that her transmitter suddenly bursts back into life.

At 1pm on 20th September Willow was just SW of Forres and then passed Lochindorb to spend that evening by the River Dulnain east of Carrbridge.  At 11am on 21st she was heading through the Cairngorms at Glen Einich and at 3pm was on the Forth south of Alloa. She roosted that night just north of Crawfordjohn.  On the 22nd she was on the peninsula at Whithorn from 2pm to 9pm.

From Moray to the Solway coast

With the help of Martin Cook, I satellite tagged a young female marsh harreir at a nest that he had located in the county of Moray. He had ringed the two young and I fitted tag 21253 – a GPS satellite tag. For the first six weeks the young female harrier ranged in the general area of the breeding site, and was more often close to the nest site probably because she was dominant.

Female (Willow) on left, male chick on right 24th July 2012