Pallid Harrier - Circus macrourus
These happy shots were taken by my then brother in law, Mick at the Pivot Fields in Dubai. I am utilising the "with the photographer" rule today - they record my tick and I was talking to the photographer at the time - actually out on a trip with them. I am not going to use this rule to post pictures on mass twitches taken by complete strangers. Mick had a long lens and I do not and this was a long lens job !
It is a happy series of pictures because they told me it was a Pallid Harrier and not a Montague's Harrier. It comes down to very fine detail with some of these birds and perhaps without a picture I would still be "at sea" as to the identification. The face pattern has a dark cheek patch which contrasts with the light ruff-collar. On a "Monties" this contrast is not there. Luckily it shows up well in this photo.
The Pivot Fields is a big nursery basically where they sell plants and also grow turf commercially which is watered by those great big wheeled contraptions that trundle around whole fields in a circle. When you fly across an arid country and see circular fields this is what you are looking at. Things need a lot of watering in the desert. As there is so much water lying and spraying about the place it has become a haven for birds on migration, overwintering and right now (late May) there are many pairs of other birds breeding. So it's an artificial oasis and magnet for the relatively few birders who are in Dubai. As a footnote sadly this site is no more much to the disappointed of the old hands of Dubai birding.
Mick and I watched this bird for quite a long time quartering the scrubby overgrown margins of the site and then circling overhead
The face pattern is distinct on this photo as well. Also the colouration underneath is very orange which makes it a juvenile bird according to everything I have looked at.
This is a bird of the Steppe whose heartland is Kazakhstan and the vast Asian interior. I would hazzard a guess that as it was early April 2010 (whenever Easter was) this young bird was on its way back up the Gulf from whereever it had overwintered. Reading up there is a huge raptor passage up the Eastern edge of the Black Sea hemmed in by the Pontic Alps. On the other side of those mountains a similar movement up the edge of the Caspian Sea. This was where this bird was heading - back to its Summer breeding grounds on the Steppe. One of just a few thousand Pallid Harriers on the move then and taking advantage of the oasis of the Pivot Fields to refuel on the move.
If I am ever going to progress seriously with this task one day I will have to post a picture of a Montague's Harrier (and they are very similar) and make a call the other way. That will be a nice jigsaw puzzle to sort out and probably like this bird it will be the photos that save me. I think I am learning a huge amount by looking at my photos and hitting the books as I go along with this. At least I now know what a Montagues Harrier does not look like - thats a start !
Pallid Harrier - Circus Macourus
April 2010 - Pivot Fields, Dubai
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