csimon

Apr 5, 2014 LV

lrichard

Excellent photos. Could this be a Pallid Harrier?

tmichael

Does any plumage of Pied ever have a pearly grey head like this (which also seems to eliminate Montagu's)?

Also isn't the exceptionally owl-like facial disk a supporting feature for Pallid, though on a really quick look at couple of books Collins/Svensson and BoEA/Brazil there doesn't seem to be any reference to that.

Jonathmartinez

the barring pattern of the inner secondaries is wrong for Pallid Harrier.

hmartin

I would have to disagree with you Jonathan. Forsman (The Raptors of Europe and the Middle East) plate 220 shows a Pallid juvenile male with an almost identical underwing to the LV bird. The main difference is less barring on the underside of the primaries on LV individual.

Jonathmartinez

Martin, I'm far to be an harrier specialist, but per my understanding on Pallid Harrier the barring is different on the inner secondaries where the pale bar become darker, where they're having the same paleness on Pied and other Harrier with similar secondaries pattern...

Jonathmartinez

Martin, me again, I'd said you've open my mind and I've made a bit of more search on internet and I would tend to agree that the barring seems to be quite variable on immature bird.
I also think that the pale grey appearing on the neck is probably some first sign of the adult plumage. Svenson mention that some 1st summer male start to moult quite early in march...so it fits quite well with this bird. I also think that the same grey on the neck and the well defined collar seems to be wrong for a light female Pied...So why not a 1st summer Male Pale Harrier...

lpaul

Several things strike me as wrong for Pallid Harrier. One is the pattern of the underside of the primaries.  These are clearly narrowly tipped black whereas on pics of juvenile Pallid there is much more extensive dark areas covering more than the primary tips.  Wing structure seems wrong to me also.  On pics of Pied P1 is clearly much shorter than P4 (which is partly why the wing tip appears so pointed) whereas on this bird P2 and P4 are almost equal in length.

[ Last edited by lpaul at 7/04/2014 09:04 ]

hmartin

Forsman plate 216 shows a juvenile Pallid with underside black primary tips and distal barring as per the LV bird. On the other hand plate 220 shows a juvenile with extensively dark primaries without distal barring, so presumably this feature is variable.

In several of his plates of juvenile Pallid, P1 is noticeably shorter than P4, as it is on this individual (Ruy has some photographs showing this).

[ Last edited by hmartin at 7/04/2014 10:14 ]

lpaul

My apologies, I meant P1 and P5.

Also, I don't agree re Plate 216.  The entire 'finger' of P1-4 are rather solidly dark.

And if this is a Pallid Harrier, what age and sex is it?

Jonathmartinez

I would have said a bird in its second calendar year, and very likely a male due to the grey feather appearing on the neck...
I don't know what to think about the wing formula, does'nt look that far to me from Pallid, from the picture I can found on the net, same on the amount of black on primary tip.
Here a few links showing ineteresting looking bird :
http://www.netfugl.dk/pictures.p ... mp;picture_id=54714
(interesting comments from Klaus Malling Olsen translatedd with google translate for the one who don't read danish:-)
http://orientalbirdimages.org/se ... _ID=&pagesize=1

lpaul

The Danish bird is starting to look promising in terms of plumage, and although the head pattern is not as well marked it does 'ghost' it, and the primary tip pattern is reduced.

I am still struggling with wing structure though, look at how short P1 is on that Danish bird...

hmartin

Re. plate 216 I'd be interested to see your copy. In mine the fingers are barred for most of their length, with a dark tip rather than completely dark. How about plate 214, the fingers are completely dark in your copy?

Jonathmartinez

I would said that on the danish bird P1 looks shorter because the bird is on direct flight as on the one from LV seems to be a bit more hoovering as the bird does when looking for prey, but to me on both birds P1 is just slightly shorter than P5 that seems to fit Pallid...
Klaus Malling Olsen in his comment said that many of these "steppe" bird are showing a lof of variation in plumage with bird more reddish and other much paler and to him the danish bird is almost an extreme in term of paleness....that would also explain why the primary tip does not look so dark and why the pale bar on inner primaries are so pale....
I also would said that the angle of the bird in the pictures are not the best to appreciate primaries lenght accuratly....

HKBWS Ivan

Credit by Marco Lam

Another angle for the same bird.

csimon

Another unclear photo for the bird.

Jonathmartinez

more good feature for Pallid to me :
- the pale area on the median covert on the upperwing as shows Montagu's, Hen and Pallid but not Pied
- P5 is not stronly digited and just slightly longer than P6 given the impression that only 4 primaries are digited, on Hen and Pied it should be much more digited and show 5 clearly digited primaries, it seems that on Pied P5 ended at about 3/4 of the distance between P6 and P4 where  on Pallid it just reach half distance... I think our bird fit this feature quite well, so to me this rule out Hen and Pied
- starting from P6 primaries are having more pale tip, and it seems that this is ruling out Montagu's...

Having said that I would go for Pallid...

hmartin

I'm posting a couple of Ruy's photographs from lunchtime Saturday. For various reasons there has been a delay in processing these pictures, which show the upper tail and left side of the face for the first time.

Forsman plate 221 shows the upper parts of a juvenile male Pallid Harrier starting to attain adult plumage by virtue of the replacement of barred juvenile inner tail feathers with adult grey feathers. The appearance of the upper parts of the LV individual is consistent with this plate.

Although the left side of the face in Ruy's photograph is underexposed the facial pattern suggests classic juvenile Pallid Harrier.

kmike

Seems like the second shot of Ruy's should dispel any doubts about the structure of the wing tip, which looks good for Pallid to me.
Cheers
Mike

EricB

I've shown the images to Dick Forsman and these are his thoughts.
"... a first-summer Pallid Harrier male, in a rather typical plumage for the season showing all the main features of the species.
However, there are some inconsistencies with this bird, and it reminds me of some of the Pallid x Hen Harrier hybrids that we get here occasionally: The wing formula shows a rather prominent although short 5th finger (counting inwards from the outermost), which should not protrude like this in Pallid (creating a wing-formula normally seen in hybrids). There is also too much white around the eye (more like in Hen) and the faint streaks on the breast-sides, if belonging to the juvenile plumage, are also not good for a pure Pallid, but indicate possible hybrid origin. In other words it could also be a hybrid or intergrade between Pallid and Hen, or possibly even between Pallid and Pied, which has never been documented before to my knowledge.
The images are very good, so studying them with some more time might reveal some additional clues."
Eric