In July 2012, Roy Dennis and friends sat-tagged two marsh harriers at a nest in Moray.
The male, ‘Reed’, took the sensible option and by-passed the UK on his migration south, heading out across the North Sea before navigating towards Spain (view his flight map here).
His sibling, a female called ‘Willow’, chose a different route for her migration. It appears she didn’t even make it out of Scotland (see here). According to the last update on Roy’s Highland Foundation for Wildlife website:
“Willow’s last location was close to Whithorn at 10.45pm on 22nd September and there have been no signals since. We are afraid that the most likely reason is that shw [sic] has been killed bearing in mind the serious illegal persecution of harriers. We hope we are wrong and that her transmitter suddenly bursts back into life“.
Raptor Persecution UK 
“On the peninsula at Whithorn…”…covers quite a large area…but none of it grouse moor. So if it is persecution it has to be “vermin control”., rather than an out of control shooter….as pheasant shooting wouldnt legally have started till the end of September….not exactly a hotbed of persecution in the past but there have been a couple of poisonings down there in the past…be nice to have a more exact location?….
Or it could be that the bird was simply targeted by someone with an inbuilt hatred of all raptors.
Reblogged this on urbanperegrines.