Williamson's Weekly Notes - Oct 28 2009

They are as big as a buzzard or a red kite but behave differently. They float along the edges of the empty downland corridors, legs often hanging down, wings lifted into a shallow V, heads peering for the movement of a finch, bunting, linnet or thrush.

I never begrudge these winter emblems their grub but grouse shooters do. Not all by any means but with the industry being such a life-line to Scottish landowners the taking of grouse chicks is viewed with coal-tinted spectacles. The Sussex bird reports hardly show a decline over the past 30 years but I have noticed one around West Sussex since 1980.

There was a sudden increase between 1966 '“ 1976 as gamekeepers began to realise that these birds were not quite the devils they had always been led to believe. For instance, Walpole-Bond in "A History of Sussex Birds" published in 1937 tells of the head-keeper at Slindon who shot no fewer than 13 harriers in the winter of 1929-30.

So, numbers dropped until the 1960s when the "anything with a hooked beak" syndrome faded and RSPB education increased. Certainly the increase has levelled out by today. West Sussex downland now holds but three birds in winter, the Arun valley about two, while Rye Bay, Ashdown Forest, and Lewes Brooks may have a couple.

Odd ones are seen around Pagham Harbour and the commons west of Midhurst. But 30 years ago I would have two on Kingley Vale, roosting in the yew forest and hunting the open downland fields north of Lavant, while there were another couple around Harting coombe and on eastwards to Cocking. That was where I used to see a cock bird, a rarity indeed for Sussex. The photograph here shows a female in her brown feathers and sporting her white rump.

The male however has an exquisite pale blue/grey plumage and black-tipped wings. He also has that white rump. I used to see him at his best every year flying amid the snowdrifts on the crest of Bepton down when he looked like something out of the distant Ice Age.

He has vanished, and I have not seen another blue male for years. The Montague's harrier looks almost the same as the hen harrier but is purely a summer visitor, and occasionally breeds on the downland fields.

The radio Archer's family had one years ago I remember, in a corner of one of their hay fields so you never know where this rare bird will suddenly appear.