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Résumé :
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The status of our ‘grey’ harriers is changing. Hen Harriers ought to be commoner and more widespread than they are in Britain – but they’re not; Montagu’s Harrier once bred in agricultural land across lowland areas of southern and east- ern England – but the species has recently been officially lost from our breeding avifauna; and, at the other end of the scale, Pallid Harrier – once a remarkably rare bird in western Europe – is an annual visitor to Britain in small numbers and breeds as close as Finland. As Editor of British Birds, papers dealing with these changes cross my desk from time to time: reports of persecution of Hen Harriers; the Rare Breeding Bird Report, which has charged the sad demise of the Mon- tagu’s Harrier; and the BBRC’s annual report, which details each and every record of Pallid Harrier recorded in Britain. Underpinning our ability to track the changing status of these three species is our capability to identity harriers with certainty. For the adult males, this seldom causes an issue, although moulting birds and hybrids can cause unexpected headaches. It is, however, the “ringtails – the adult females and the juveniles – that cause birders the most problems. As this generously illustrated publication shows, observers faced with a ringtail harrier need not despair: by paying attention to key features – such are the number of primaries forming the wing tip, the pattern of the secondaries, and the charac- teristics of the facial pattern – birds can readily be identified.
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