Rare bird and 'blog star' Heather the harrier shot dead

A rare feathered hen harrier whose travels around Ireland were tracked and followed via a website has been shot dead .

The bird was found in Kerry last month. The female hen harrier, named Heather had been tagged with the satellite-tracking device shortly after she hatched in 2013 in east Kerry. She quickly became a star, as her travels were followed by thousands of people on an online blog.

She was killed with a shotgun in the Waterville area. The cause of death was only established this week.

The rare bird of prey was fitted with a satellite tagged as part of a joint project involving the NPWS and IRD Dunhallow, a rural development group in Cork which set up the site: henharrierireland.blogspot.ie to track the bird’s movements. The site has received over 250,000 hits since its launch.

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Rare Cahow bird spotted off Kerry coast

One of the world’s rarest birds — once thought extinct for over 300 years — has been spotted off the Kerry coast.

The Bermuda petrel, better known as the Cahow, was observed by crew members of the Celtic Voyager — the Irish Marine Institute’s research vessel.

The “astonishing” sighting of the endangered seabird took place off Kerry on Monday. Within hours, the Bermuda Audubon Society confirmed the report through data emitted by the bird’s electronic geolocator.

The medium-sized Cahow is the national bird of Bermuda.

It is currently being “laboriously brought back from the brink” by conservationists with only about 180 of the species known to exist.

A slow-breeding ground-nester, the bird was wiped out during the 1600s when colonisation of the North Atlantic island introduced species such as boars, cats, dogs and rats.

It was rediscovered on the island in 1951.

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