UK’s Rarest Bird Nests Kept Secret to Keep Wildlife Photographers Away

A Montagu’s harrier – which is the UK’s rarest bird of prey – has reared six chicks this year in a secret nest. This is an undated photo from The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) | Image credit: Graham Catley/RSPB

The UK’s rarest bird of prey has successfully bred in a secret location for a second consecutive year to keep wildlife photographers away.

The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) reports that a male Montagu’s harrier, the UK’s rarest bird of prey, bred with two different females. The RSPB says it successfully helped rear and feed three chicks in each of the two secret nests on English farmland.

According to a report by the Telegraph of London, the locations of the nests have not been revealed because the area could not handle an influx of wildlife photographers and bird watchers hoping to see the rare species. If the locations became public, experts say birders and photographers could visit the farms to see or photograph the harriers, potentially disturbing the birds.

Mark Thomas, the species lead for Montagu’s harriers at the RSPB, says that the secret nests are “on working farms with no public access — they simply could not handle the influx of visitors.”

The Montagu’s harriers have successfully bred for the second year running in the same secret location. Last year, the breeding birds raised four chicks in what was the first successful breeding by the species since 2019.

The male Montagu’s harrier has been busy bringing food to the hungry chicks in his two nests. BBC News was given exclusive access to one of the nests and captured footage of the birds feeding. The male drops prey from the air, which the female catches in her talons after turning upside down.

‘A Species Right on The Brink’

Montagu’s harriers, raptors sometimes referred to as the “aristocrats of the bird world,” were placed on the UK’s red list of birds most at risk in 2021. Their numbers have declined from a high of nine successful nests in 2011, with no evidence of successful breeding between 2020 and 2024.

Montagu’s harriers migrate from Africa to Europe each spring to breed, but only a small number reach the UK, the RSPB says. Their behavior after leaving the nest is not well understood. For the first time this year, the RSPB fitted two chicks with satellite tags to learn more about their movements and help improve protection for the species. The tracking data could also help prevent their low-lying nests, which are concealed among crops, from being accidentally destroyed.

“This is a species right on the brink, and climate change is not helping that. The harvest here, for example, this year, was like a month earlier than in previous years,” Thomas says. “So it almost puts any Montagu’s harrier nest at the peril of inadvertently being destroyed by farm machinery,”