Pagney 17/9/26 - Pallid Harrier

     Early start - too foggy to count the Corn Buntings properly as they left the roost (about twenty or so seen), a Dunlin was a new bird as the fog lifted, Misère the Purple Heron was still there. I saw a few more Blackcaps than in the previous days. 

    Indeed it was all rather crap until 10:35 when out of nowhere a migrating male Pallid Harrier zipped close and rather low over the water, over the trees  and out of sight. Luckily it wasn't a female type bird as there is no way I'd have managed to clinch an ID on such a brief view. I managed to pick it up again over the fields near the railway line being mobbed by the local Carrion Crows but the views were now distant and from behind. Within a minute the bird had gone. This is now the sixth Pallid Harrier I've seen in the Ognon Valley around Pagney, they are getting to be more and more frequent while the once common Montagu's Harrier has become quite rare indeed.

    Having seen a good bird, even fleetingly, gave me a bit of a boost to look more in the skies. Other migrants today were four Marsh Harriers, two Honey Buzzards (one dark one pale) one Black Kite and 28 Stock Doves. A Black-headed Gull flew straight through, not even slowing down for one second.


If I said this was a Common Gull you'd believe me.



Crayons can do what the camera can not.

A group of seventeen Stock Doves migrating.








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