Western Marsh Harrier

Can be confused withSource

• Common Buzzard — Buzzard soars high on broad wings and has a short, broad tail. Marsh Harrier flies low over the ground with slightly raised wings and looks slimmer and longer-tailed — it is the flight, not the size, that separates them.
• Hen Harrier — Hen Harrier is smaller and slimmer; the male is pale grey with black wingtips and a broad white rump, and the female shows a conspicuous white rump too. No Marsh Harrier has that white rump — the male is rufous and variegated, the female uniformly dark brown with a cream head.

Plumage and variationSource

Male and female: The male is variegated: rufous body, greyish secondaries and tail, black wingtips. The female is almost uniformly dark brown with a cream crown, nape and throat — and no white rump, which separates her from a female Hen Harrier.

VoiceSource

During the aerobatics of the display flight the male gives nasal, plaintive calls. The female has a high, piping voice she repeats as the male brings food to the nest.

BehaviourSource

Quarters low over reedbed, fields, meadows and wetland. Once prey is located it can hang on whirring wings and then plunge. Over open water it uses another method: forcing coot chicks and ducklings to dive again and again until they are exhausted, then taking them without effort.

When and whereSource

A Danish breeder on the increase, nesting in reedbeds in lakes, bogs and marshes and commonest in the south and south-east. After past persecution and drainage the population has grown from around 600 pairs in 1985 to 1,000-1,100 pairs in 2021; NOVANA's 2023 count gives a national estimate of about 1,070 pairs. Least Concern on the 2019 Red List. Also a fairly common passage migrant from Sweden and Finland in spring and autumn. Winters in tropical West Africa and southern Europe.

Facts

RelativesSource