not a marsh but a hen harrier (1 Viewer)

[CWH]

I thought I'd seen a male marsh hen (thanks @JeanLuc ) harrier before.
After a definite sighting yesterday evening, I realised I hadn't! He's so striking...
He lives just behind the house but we saw him just along the road, a couple of hundred yards as the crow harrier flies, heading home.
This is NOT my photo but gives a good idea of just how distinctive his plumage is.

 

[JeanLuc]

That’s not a Marsh Harrier but something rather less common in England now regrettably. It’s a Male Hen Harrier. The dastardly Grouse-shooting fraternity appear to be having them killed despite it behind a red listed bird with special protection.

 

[CWH]

That’s not a Marsh Harrier but something rather less common in England now regrettably. It’s a Male Hen Harrier. The dastardly Grouse-shooting fraternity appear to be having them killed despite it behind a red listed bird with special protection.

Oops sorry, you're right of course, thank you Philip! I do tend to get the names mixed up because 'our' bird's territory is all bog/ marsh, but it's a HEN harrier that lives here (thread title amended...) There's a female too, haven't seen her recently - do they pair for life?
Thanks again for the correction. Maybe now I'll remember!

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[icantremember]

Nice one! A Hen Harrier is a great sighting as they are so rare now .. you are very lucky to have a nesting pair.

 

[big bertha]

We were at Gairloch last week and thought about a trip to Skye but weather wasn't great so just headed down to cabin but will visit sometime.

 

[CWH]

We were at Gairloch last week and thought about a trip to Skye but weather wasn't great so just headed down to cabin but will visit sometime.

It's lovely here just now...
And we have a juvenile male golden eagle staying nearby, as well as expecting our pair of sea eagles to start making their presence known. (Loads of sea eagles just along the road, there's a valley that they seem to have made 'their own'.)
So get yourself along BB!

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[DBK]

Don't feel bad about the mis-identification, I do it ALL the time! Male Hen and Marsh Harriers are not easy to tell apart. One distinguishing feature is the Hen Harrier has a black trailing edge to the wing which you can see in the picture you posted.

But the biggest way to tell them apart is distribution. The only recorded breeding Marsh Harriers in the UK are in East Anglia. This doesn't mean you don't have one which no one knows about but on a balance of probabilities distribution would steer you towards the Hen Harrier.

I've recently bought the Collins Bird Guide to the birds of Britain and Europe. It is very comprehensive but not cheap at £20 but they also do an app for £15 which is excellent. It has all the information in the book plus recordings of bird song for many of the species. The only problem with the app is you have to have some idea of what you are looking for as unlike the book you can't just flick through the pages until you see something which resembles the bird you are looking at. But having a copy on my mobile phone is a lot easier to carry about in the field than the book.

 

[Speve]

Here’s a Marsh Harrier for you they are a lot different to hen and Montigues males.

 

[olley]

This app help?
http://earthsky.org/earth/app-identifies-birds-photos-merlin

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[DavidG58]

we usually see a hen harrier on our travels through in northern France, very striking birds

I did think that Marsh harriers were more like buzzards though, or is that just the females?

 

[JeanLuc]

Here is a good picture of a male Marsh Harrier. As you can see it is predominantly brown with grey tail and grey wing panels. These look like grey ‘shoulders’ in flight. Both male and female are bigger than Hen Harriers, particularly more bulky. The female approaches Buzzard-sized and the male looks pretty big. As mentioned above, they can be seen along the north Norfolk coast and the Suffolk coast. Also at RSPB Blacktoft Sands on the Humber, Otmoor north of Oxford and on the Somerset levels.

 

[olley]

That app I linked to suggests a Eurasian Marsh Harrier. Just wondering how good it is.

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[JeanLuc]

I tried the Merlin App recently. It’s pretty good so long as you download the British database. Obviously it is biased towards the USA since it is produced by Cornell University. The descriptions are a bit limited but the ‘suggested species’ engine works quite well so long as you are accurate with the inputs. I downloaded British, Western Europe, and Scandinavian databases, the latter to include winter migrating species.
After playing with it for about a month I deleted it as it took up quite a bit of storage on the iPad. On balance I prefer a booksince the iPad is hardly pocketable, but if I had an iPhone I would probably buy the Collins App since this is a very comprehensive guide.
My favourite book is Britain’s Birds Amazon product ASIN 0691158894

 

[olley]

No problem on an android as I have a 32gig SD card for extra storage.

 

[JeanLuc]

Unfortunately our iPad has only 16gb of storage. There is still plenty to work with but the Merlin databases used more space than I was prepared to give.
I think on a smartphone, the app would be very useful as you could take it with you when birdwatching. Also note that the databases contain calls and songs as well as photos which can really help with identification.

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[spara]

Marsh harriers all year at Leighton Moss RSPB for a couple of years now. Not a technically good pic but the golden head is very prominent.

 

[CWH]

The resident male hen harrier is very visible right now, he sits on the onshore wind just over the doctor's house for ages with no apparent effort. The ringtail is more active and crosses the road at low level, apparently checking out walkers (though I suspect really looking for food... )


Love your photo @spara

 

[CWH]

Looks like the pair have slipped back over the hill to their breeding ground at the bottom of the croft, they've both been spotted just down by the burn where the otters live and the roe deer come in the evenings.

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