Last Saturday 14th of June in the Carcans' municipality we protected a Monatgu's Harrier nest which had been spared by a forest company that had left 4 sq meter of vegetation with the nest (we had found the nest and put the red and white tag on each side of it). The nest was in the middle of a "desert" of ground of moor ploughed creating a "target" effect which facilitates its destruction by predators. On Tuesday 10th the female was incubating in these 4 sq m. Today, saturday 14th , there were 1 egg, three young chicks and one egg hatching; we had brought 10 m of wire net of 25 mm mesh size and 1 m of height, pickets of tomato (not enough time for gardening this year), small green pickets made by J. Pierre during the winter time and small wooden pickets made by Jaime to fix the wire net to the ground. Jaime since Thursday 12th had also manufactured a box following Jean Luc Bourrioux's model in case, bought 10 m of wire net and a very useful stapler! Before installing the wire net, we cut off the heath, then we arrived at the nest; We began to unfold the wire net and to set it by fixing it with the pickets of tomato; in spite of the striking of the mass, the female had not taken off; she made it only when we arrived at her height. In 25 min we closed our enclosure and fixed by means of staples the wire netting to pickets and to the heath, and with the small wooden pickets we fix the wire net to the ground to avoid the passage of predators under the fence. We were very happy and satisfied with our successful work, mainly when we saw that 10 min later the female was back to her nest!
14.06.2008: Protection of a Montagu’s Harrier nest
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