A Male Hen Harrier at Copt Hall

6th February 2025

Today's mission was to look for the Great Grey Shrike, but it hadn't been reported the day before and no sign today so perhaps it had moved to another part of the saltmarsh or moved on altogether.

However, by way of compensation a male Hen Harrier was hunting over a field of set-a-side next to the sea wall. Unfortunately it was hunting along the hedgerow on the opposite side of the field, a distance of 400 metres as measured on Google Maps. To make things worse it was spending a lot of its time on the ground out of sight, so overall the conditions were fairly challenging.

I did manage to get some record shots during the short flights and this first sequence was taken when the sun was out.

This second sequence was taken with the sun behind cloud which from a photographic perspective would normally be bad news, but on this occasion it had the effect of darkening the background thereby providing more contrast with the bird.

This bird has very clean silvery grey wings underneath, but a pale brownish hue on the mantle and trailing edges of the secondaries, so therefore I suspect it is a 3CY male.