| The Northern Harrier is our only regularly occurring hawk that is strictly tied to marshes and fields, completely avoiding wooded areas. It is one of our rarest breeding species, and whether it nests each summer is open to question, even though a few adults are seen in some coastal marshes in midsummer. Fortunately, there are several documented breeding records. Nonetheless, one cannot assume local breeding by simply observing an adult in June. The species is best known as a wintering bird over the extensive coastal marshes, and numbers have shown a slight decline there, presumably owing to declining nesting habitat on its breeding grounds in Canada and the northern states. The species also migrates through the state and winters in many areas, but extensive grasslands/meadows/marshes are clearly declining inland, and thus wintering numbers have been decreasing in recent years, especially in the Piedmont. The species is most numerous over extensive salt and brackish marshes, and also over extensive fresh marshes and fields near the coast.
In 2017, the AOS (now named the American Ornithological Society) split the Northern Harrier off from the Old World taxon, into two species. The New World form changes its name from Circus cyaneus to Circus hudsonius. |