Natural England has recently, but I’ve only just noticed, published an update to its Hen Harrier data to include data from this year (and some from a little earlier too).
The update shows that 5 Hen Harrier chicks were satellite-tagged in England by NE in 2018: 3 have gone missing in the North Pennines (Mabel, which we knew about), South Wales (Tom, which I think is news) and Bodmin Moor (Barney, which I also think is news).
Tom went to the seaside south of Bridgend (I used https://gridreferencefinder.com/ to locate the area) :
Barney went to Bodmin Moor south of the A30 where it has been snowy recently:
We already knew that John (tagged in July 2016) had gone missing in an area of grouse moors west of Grassington (see Raptor Persecution UK blog posts of 15 October 2017, 23 October 2017 and 16 November 2017):
The odd thing about this record on the NE update is that they say that the last contact with John was 10 January 2017 – whereas the police were searching for a body in mid October because NE had noticed a ‘problem’ with the tag on 5 October 2017. This looks like the type of error we have come to expect from NE when publishing their data. Expect a revision in the next few weeks – unless someone can explain the apparent contradiction…
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It is very hard to follow what we know about NE birds. I try to keep up but fail.
If only it didn’t change so often.
I wonder if this has been issued to finally correct what we all hope is to come in the peer reviewed report and data?
Still, the link you gave shows what NE believes missing fate unknown includes.
Perhaps it also includes shot, bird and tag destroyed, buried or removed. Strangely enough it does not say that anywhere in the 8 lines of possibilities.
Perhaps no one has indicated to NE that should also be included.
I wonder if they have accidently swapped January (1) with October (10)… and the date would be the 1st of October not the 10th of January…?