Until recently this was regarded as a subspecies of the Hen Harrier but now it is regarded as a separate species, the Northern Harrier, Circus hudsonicus. The two birds are very similar but, as the image above shows, the male Northern isn’t as clean-looking and striking a bird as our Hen Harrier. No wonder an American friend, on seeing a male Hen Harrier in Israel exclaimed, with real appreciation, that it was a ‘spanky bird’.
At the place where I stopped to watch the Northern Harrier I saw a couple of other birds typical of the prairie grasslands – Lark Bunting and Swainson’s Hawk. To be fair, there wasn’t a blade of grass to be seen in the flat treeless High Plains – from horizon to horizon were planted fields of corn, cereals etc. If Clint Eastwood were to ride through this landscape today it might provide a rather different backdrop to his exploits.
But these are the High Plains, although everything seems pretty flat as one rides west one gradually gains altitude. Here I’m at c3,500ft. And there’s hardly anyone around. In the US Census of 1880 Cheyenne Co had 37 souls living in it but a decade later there were 4,400 and in 1930, touching 7000. Since then there have been eight decades of depopulation and most folk live either in Wheeler or Bird City – the rest are farmers.
A very few miles further west and I am in Yuma Co, Colorado and I’ve gained an hour as I’ve passed from Central Time to Mountain Time. Part of that hour is spent watching a male Northern Harrier high in the sky carrying food. I can tell you he’s flying due south as the road, from which I look west, runs directly north/south. I’m hoping to see a food pass as that must be what is going to happen but he travels at least a couple of miles, gradually losing height before disappearing beyond a barn and the southwest horizon and disappears. Never mind, there are some Prairie Dogs and Burrowing Owls to look at on the eastern side of the road.
By the time I get to Yuma, I’ve gained another 600 feet of altitude, seen many more Northern Harriers and had a quick look at the battlefield of Beecher Island (not much to see, but always something to think about at battlefields).
Northern Harriers are with me for much of my journey – in grasslands and wetlands, on the coasts and in the mountains, where there are people and where it seems there are only cattle, in wildlife refuges and in arable farmland. Nobody is bothered by them and just about nobody bothers them, even in South Dakota whose State Bird is, bizarrely, the Pheasant. Back in the UK, where much of the landscape is given over to a wholly unsustainable and selfish private hobby of shooting birds for fun, people demonise these rodent catchers. We should be ashamed of our dewilded uplands, devoid of their rightful wildlife.
Click here for a Tim Melling image of Northern Harrier.
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Mark thanks for this poignant travel diary entry.
The Dakota state bird — an introduced ring-neck pheasant? It’s a far cry from the Cheyenne’s symbolic birds which are mostly raptor-like, it seems:
https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=cheyenne+tribe+symbolic+bird&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwihkdrtt5vcAhXIJsAKHbMPAzoQsAQISg&biw=1366&bih=662
Nobody is bothered by them. I suspect it’s much the same for harriers over the rest of Europe.
Great account Mark. Can I ask you about their response to your presence?
In the UK it’s rare outside a hide to be able to get within about 100m of a raptor, with the odd exception. Hobbies for instance will come pretty close to you at times, but they are only summer visitors. Most raptors in the UK though are super wary, and it can be difficult to get within 150m of them in the open and usually they will take off at even greater distances. On my local patch, Hen Harriers will often turn around and fly straight away from a person several hundred metres away.
Whilst I’ve been a nature photographer for a long time generally I stuck to macro photography, simply because of how difficult it is to get close to British birds, not just raptors, for a frame filling shot. When the internet got more accessible and it was possible to see far more work of other photographers I was just astounded by the raptor photos of American photographers. I just marvelled at these detailed close-ups they got. How did they do it? Thanks to YouTube and many of the great videos by bird photographers I now know how. Birds will let you get astoundingly close in America. So close I have never had similar encounters in the UK ever, and I don’t just mean raptors. Nor do they take evasive action when you point a lens at them. Yet as we know shooting is a widespread hobby in America, and before that Native Americans hunted birds. But because of the space, and the way so much semi-wild land is utilised for organised shooting in the UK, clearly British birds are far more aware of the danger of being shot at than similar bird species elsewhere.
I think it was Tim Melling who mentioned how much easier it was to get close to birds in America.
Overall, I see very little mention of this. Yet self-evidently many British birds are hypersensitive (some species far more than others) to the danger of being shot at, when similar or the same species elsewhere are not. Raptors are some of the most hypersensitive to the dangers of being shot at by people, even species like Kestrels and Sparrowhawks. I believe this speaks volumes about what the self-appointed guardians of our countryside get up to, when they think no one is looking. Contrast the behaviour of birds like Robins, where there has always been a taboo against killing them and shooting them in British culture.
I long for the day when many species of bird in this country, especially raptors, are not terrified of me.
SteB – interesting point. I’ll have to go back and test it properly. But I did have some very close views of Northern Harrier – I remember one of a bird sitting on a post with a prey item (which I couldn’t identify but it had a very long tail) where I did think ‘I can’t remember getting this close in the UK’. And some roadside ‘passing very close to the car’ encounters too. Might be something in it – not sure.
It is similar in India if you go birding in an area that has high use of catapults e.g. Shillong
Sorry my comment was a bit obvious really. SteB’s is pointing out the nationwide effect of raptor crimes. It is not surprising though, when Brian Etheridge calculates that 55-74 female Hen Harriers are killed each year in Scotland which is 11-15% of the UK population of breeding females and that figure does not include males or immatures https://www.jstor.org/stable/2405296?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents.
I have always found it odd that it takes so long for this fear of man to be lost even in short lived species. I suspect that memory is somehow being inherited.
I’ve recently read ” The Battle of Beecher Island and the Indian War of 1867-69″ by john H Monnett which tells much of the sorry tale of the dispossession of the Southern Cheyenne, Arapaho and the Kiyuksa band of Oglalla Lakota of their best traditional hunting and camping grounds along the Platte, Smoky Hill, Republican and Solomon Rivers. The battle itself was notable for the heroism of the white scouts and the loss of the famous Northern Cheyenne warrior Woquini, known to whites as Roman Nose at the time fighting with his southern Cheyenne tribal colleagues. The book is a good read to those interested in the history.
As to harriers my views are well known, Hen Harrier is a bird that has always been special to me what happens still in the uplands of the UK to this species is and has been for a very long time a national scandal. There is no legal reason why Hen Harrier should not be as common as its near relative the Northern Harrier is in the American high plains country. One day we will prevail even as the Cheyenne Dog Soldiers did not, there is really no other option.
Paul – what a coincidence! I’m amazed anyone reading this blog had heard of the battle. Thank you. I’ve just ordered the book! I expect it deals with the Battle of Summit Springs – a bit further up the road too – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Summit_Springs. Well, it should be a bit further up the road but I couldn’t find any sign or mention of it on the ground!
One of my other interests Mark, Plains Indians notably Cheyenne, Kiowa and Comanche. Yes I know about Summit Springs too where Cheyenne dog soldier power was finally broken and their leader Tall Bull killed, mainly by Pawnees fighting for the US. The other book worth reading is The Fighting Cheyenne by GB Grinnell who knew and interviewed many of the old warriors in the early C20th