A DISTANT MACHINE-GUN-LIKE chatter fills the still July air. Binoculars raised, we quickly pick out the white rump of a female hen harrier dive-bombing her more conspicuous silver-grey mate, who is nonchalantly preening on a rocky outcrop. After several attempts to cajole him into hunting, she gives up and disappears into the heather. "She's brooding young chicks," asserts Brian Etheridge of the Scottish Raptor Monitoring Group, who has been ringing birds of prey in these remote Scottish glens for 40 years.
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