Pallid Harrier

Can be confused withSource

• Hen Harrier — Male Hen Harrier is a darker grey, black right out to the wingtip, and shows a dark trailing edge along the whole wing. The Pallid’s black wedge stands isolated out in the hand, and the arm is clean.
• Montagu's Harrier — Male Montagu's Harrier has a black band across the secondaries and a three-toned upperside; the Pallid's black is confined to the isolated wedge in the hand, and its upperside is uniformly very pale. Both show four "fingers", so finger-counting does not separate them.

Plumage and variationSource

Male and female: The male is easily told by his pale plumage. The female, by contrast, is very hard to separate from Montagu's in particular, and is easily confused with a female Hen Harrier too — only details of the face pattern will serve.

Juvenile: The immature has a warm orange-brown underside and — unlike an immature Montagu's — a distinct pale collar. Younger males, by contrast, are not yet fully patterned: they can show a dark trailing edge on the arm that fades outwards, while the hand is already clean and adult-like. That combination is what makes a young Pallid look like a Hen Harrier, and it is why the arm alone settles nothing.

BehaviourSource

Less springy in flight than the other harriers, a little more buzzard-like. In behaviour and general biology it otherwise closely resembles Montagu's. In Denmark it is seen mostly at the larger migration watchpoints.

When and whereSource

A rare passage visitor from eastern Europe and Central Asia; the nearest breeding grounds lie in the Romanian and Russian steppes. It began appearing here in earnest after 2000, and a 2020 field guide put the level at 50-100 birds a year, with considerably more in invasion years. That figure is not brought up to date here: DOF's own reporting points to markedly higher numbers, and the species no longer requires documentation by DOF's rarities committee, but we have not found a newer source giving a comparable count. Most occur in spring, in April and May, and in invasion years in autumn too. Winters in tropical East Africa, Asia Minor and India.

Facts

RelativesSource