Weihen Lower Austria

Harriers are easy to recognise by their hunting behaviour. They search for prey in a slow, low, buoyant flight just above the vegetation, holding the wings in a characteristic shallow V above the body. This silhouette clearly separates them from buzzards or goshawks. Prey, mostly small mammals such as voles plus young birds, lizards and large insects, is surprised on the ground from short range. The marsh harrier takes a higher share of waterbirds and passerines.

The habitat preferences of the four species complement one another. The marsh harrier is the classic reedbed bird, breeding in the dense reeds of lakes and ponds, although in recent decades it has increasingly nested in cereal and oilseed rape fields and in ditches lined with reeds within the open farmland. Hen harrier and Montagu's harrier are birds of open cultivated landscapes, with original habitats in bogs, heaths and damp meadows. Today both species breed almost exclusively as ground nesters in cereal and alfalfa fields. The pallid harrier breeds from Ukraine to Mongolia and appears in central Europe mainly as a migrant in open farmland and in the North German lowlands.

All harriers suffered dramatic declines in Germany during the twentieth century. Montagu's harrier came close to extinction and the national breeding population today stands at roughly 500 pairs. The hen harrier has disappeared as a regular breeder across most of Germany and now occurs mainly as a winter visitor. The main drivers are the loss of wetlands, the intensification of agriculture with early mowing and harvest dates that fall before the young have fledged, and the decline of small mammals. Because hen and Montagu's harriers now nest on the ground in mown meadows and ripening cereal fields, without active protection many broods are lost to combine harvesters and to ground predators such as fox, wild boar and raccoon.

Nest protection has emerged as the most effective conservation tool for Montagu's harrier. Volunteer harrier wardens, generally organised through NABU, LBV or regional species recovery programmes, locate nests in cereal fields, agree a small protection zone with the farmer that is left unmown, and fence the clutch against ground predators. The effectiveness is well documented: in unprotected nests only around 0.3 young fledge on average, while in monitored and fenced nests the figure is roughly seven times higher. For hunters, harriers are not a quarry species but strictly protected fellow inhabitants of the hunting ground. Useful contributions from the hunting community are reporting sightings to the relevant species recovery programmes, accepting buffer zones around breeding sites and promoting extensively managed fallows, field margins and wet areas as part of habitat stewardship in the revier.