Montagu's harrier...

What a brilliant morning! Up early, so I could spend an hour or two at Blacktoft Sands, and get back home before the Tour de Yorkshire started (the cyclists would be coming through Howden… at speed). I’d read, on the reserve’s website, that a female Montagu’s Harrier had returned… as it has for the last five years (though not, alas, a male). It’s a bird I’ve never seen… or ever expected to see: possibly our rarest breeding raptor.

I had the hide to myself as I scanned the reedbeds. I saw marsh harriers passing food to each other in flight: one of the highlights of springtime here. I saw spotted redshank, ringed plover, avocets and ruffs coming into breeding plumage. I heard a bittern booming and then saw it fly across the open water. A heron was holding out its wings to dry.  I heard reed warblers, sedge warblers, blackcaps and whitethroats. I saw the first swift of the summer. And then I saw a bird: definitely a harrier, but lighter and slimmer than a marsh harrier. The wings were longer and narrower, the tail straight rather than fanned. The flight was very different to a marsh harrier. My book says “a bit like a tern”, and that’s exactly right. Sort of ‘bouncy’… whereas a marsh harrier can be ponderous as it hovers over the reeds, before dropping down to catch a mouse or vole. Yes, I’d found the montagu’s harrier, and without any help!

I walked back to the Romahome in a hailstorm, and failed to see any cyclists: a result, I think.

Blacktoft Sands (the bird is a marsh harrier)…