Montagu’s Harrier chicks tagged for the first time in UK

Join writer and RSPB volunteer Kayla Cohen as she goes behind the scenes to witness a UK-first for Montagu's Harrier conservation.

In late July 2026, a small team of RSPB raptor fieldworkers converged on a sun-singed field and ventured towards Britain’s best kept wildlife secret.

Inside a patch of barley crop, generously left by the farmer as habitat for Britain’s rarest raptor, is a Montagu’s Harrier nest. This is one of only two (known) “Monty” nests established this year in the whole of Britain. Located roughly one kilometre apart, both nests are home to three chicks fathered by the same male mating with two females. For months, the RSPB has monitored these nests at a secret location to conserve this migratory species that flits in and out of national extinction.

Based on close observation and equipped with research licenses, the team had calculated a short window of time in which to do their work, just days before the chicks fledged. As the wind subsided, the specialists lifted one chick from each nest and, for the first time in UK history, fitted juvenile Monties with state-of-the-art satellite tracking tags.

“Montagu’s Harriers are the aristocrats of the bird world,” says Mark Thomas, who has worked as the RSPB Montagu’s Harrier species lead for the past twenty years. “They are calm, graceful, and precise in their behaviour. Everything they do is completely calculated, and that includes where they choose to breed.”

Monties have tended to nest in the same areas annually, but it is not every year that Mark and his team get the chance to work hands-on at the frontline of their recovery.

Monties migrate from Africa from mid-March and fan out across Europe, chasing spring. Only a small portion of the global population flies to the UK, which is at the edge of its breeding range. Like many other species, Monties have had to contend with persecution, predation, habitat loss, and now the early, drought-induced onset of harvest which threatens to crush their nests under heavy machinery if left unnoticed and unprotected.

Although the UK breeding population has never been large, peaking at roughly 30 pairs in the 1950s, this raptor is distinctly British in at least one sense: it is named after the British ornithologist George Montagu who first dispelled the myth that the silver male was a separate species from the brown female and chicks.

Their recent near-absence from our skies – none bred here between 2020 and 2023 – threatened to cut UK raptor species down to fourteen. It also reflects a wider downward trend in some parts of the global population.

However, working in lockstep with birdwatchers and farmers, the RSPB’s conservation project is again delivering results, with one pair breeding in 2025 and a further two nests established this spring.

In 1982, long before satellite-tags were commonly used for birds, the RSPB bought Titchwell Marsh nature reserve in Norfolk in an effort to conserve Montagu’s Harriers. Monties had been found nesting at the now well-known reserve, although – as chance would have it – they did not return to breed there the following year.

In a further attempt to co-ordinate Montagu’s Harrier conservation, the RSPB convened a meeting with UK Montagu’s Harrier fieldworkers and the Dutch Montagu’s Harrier Foundation. Inspired by the Dutch team, more nests were fenced off from ground predators and colour-rings were used to identify individual birds.

In 2014, this international partnership tagged adult Monties for the first time in Britain, revealing the fates that befell our fragile population. Some tags tracked their carriers for years, documenting migratory routes that stretched further south than scientists had previously thought, whereas others mysteriously stopped transmitting, likely due to persecution.

Since tagging, both chicks and their siblings have flown their nests, and the stubby fields of barley have become their inaugural hunting grounds. They are still receiving meals from the females, both of whom will migrate back to Africa soon, followed by their offspring, and lastly the male.

It is difficult to imagine how these birds, so freshly hatched, will undertake a roughly 3,500-mile journey to their wintering grounds. But, with the tags now fitted, we will no longer need to imagine. Real-time data can help us piece together answers to some of our questions.

“The tags give us a direct insight into these birds’ migration and survival,” Mark explains. “The chicks we’ve tagged may not be representative of all juveniles, but they can still offer answers, particularly as to when and where they return to Britain.”

If, when the chicks have matured, they nest in the UK, satellite signals will be the RSPB’s new cue to action.