T h e M a r s h - H a r r i e r or Moor-Buzzard, as its names
import, is generally found on low, marshy lands, or uncultivated
moors ; and in England was not so many years since
very numerous in the fens of Cambridgeshire and the
adjoining counties. Its flight is slow, smooth, and generally
near the ground. Though from the regular manner in which
birds of this genus traverse the surface, looking for prey,
like a dog hunting for game, it has been thought that they
have acquired the name of Harriers ; it seems almost certain
that this has been rather conferred from their marauding
disposition, since the plundering propensities of the conspicuously
coloured males of the species next to he described,
must have made them in old times a well-known terror
to the poultry-wives of the districts bordering on their
haunts.*
The history of the Harriers as British Birds could not be
correctly told without referring to the changes effected by
the systematic drainage of the extensive fens of the eastern
parts of England from Lincolnshire southward. The result
of this process, begun centuries ago but only completed in
our own day, has been to bring under the plough many
thousands of acres which were formerly overgrown with
sedge and sallow-bushes, but now produce an abundance of
corn and green-crops. From the districts so reclaimed by
the civil engineer, for the good of the agriculturist and
through him of the nation at large, the Harriers with many
other kinds of birds have been almost entirely banished,
and though the naturalist may pardonably lament the consequent
diminution and loss of so many interesting members
of the fauna and flora of England, he cannot but recognize
it to have been fairly incurred in obedience to the law which
bids man replenish the earth and subdue it. Here it is
impossible to enter into details, but the curious may find
in an account of the Isle of Ely, written shortly after the
* I t is worthy of remark th a t th e present species was called hy the older English
writers, as even of late years by th e fenmen, Moor-Buzzard only, and the
term Marsh-Harrier, now generally given to it by ornithologists, is certainly a
book-natne of comparatively modern application.
Norman Conquest,* and in Gough’s description f of the
East Fen, between Reevesby and Wainfleet in Lincolnshire,
written not an hundred years ago, much suggestive material;
while a sketch of the chief features of a third part of the
fen-country is given in the introduction to Mr. Stevenson’s
‘Birds of Norfolk’ (vol. i. p. liv.). Of the three species of
Harrier which once abounded in these very peculiar districts,
the present was the first to succumb, and the drainage of
Whittlesea Mere in Huntingdonshire, completed in 1851,
seems to have given the final blow to its existence as a bird
indigenous to this part of the country. Devonshire and the
eastern portion of Norfolk are now the only regular breeding-
places of this bird in England, according to Mr. More,
though its nest may be occasionally found in Cornwall,
Somerset, Dorset, Hampshire and Shropshire. In Wales,
Suffolk, Cambridgeshire, Huntingdonshire, Lincolnshire
and the counties from Yorkshire northward it has become
historical. In Scotland, on the same authority, Aberdeenshire
furnishes the only locality where it breeds regularly,
though it does so occasionally in the counties of Perth,
Banff and perhaps Argyll, while a nest is said to have been
once known in the Orkneys. Mr. Robert Gray says that
the birds which occur in the northern kingdom have generally
been in the first or second year’s plumage, and that, though
on the whole scarce, there are some districts, such as Nether
Lochaber and Appin, in which it is comparatively common.
In Ireland Thompson says it was resident in suitable localities
throughout the island, and Mr. Watters considered it the
most abundant of the larger birds-of-prey.
Like the other species of the genus the Marsh-Harrier
roosts on the ground, and by day may be seen sitting on a
stone, post or low bush, or beating round and round the
reeds which skirt the water in search of prey, in its choice
of which not much comes amiss—small mammals or birds,
the young of larger ones, and wounded animals of all kinds
* Liber Eliensis. (Edited for th e Society Anglia Christiana by D. J . Stewart.)
London: 1868. vol. i. p. 231.
f Camden’s ‘ Britan nia .’ London: 1789. vol. ii. p. 271.
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