Pallid Harrier in West Sussex

Pallid Harrier juv.

On Friday 23 rd September i travelled down to West Sussex to hopefully see the juv Pallid Harrier i met up with Dan and Michael who had already seen the bird as they only live about 15 minutes from Burpham where the Harrier has been residing for about a week , well we were on site soon enough and instantly were enjoying good views of a male Hen Harrier mobbing a Common Buzzard , not long after enjoying that spectacle we were soon looking at a couple of Red Kites drifting along the nearby hill side , after about 30 minutes there was still no sign of the star bird , Dan was confident it would show in the area we were standing in , i was abit twitchy as i needed this for my UK list , then we all had a distant view as the Pallid Harrier flew high and away from us , damn yes i have seen it but not very well , we only had to wait another 20 minutes or so when Michael picked out flying low from a completely different direction , it continued to fly right in front of us even chasing Wood Pigeons at one point , the Pallid Harrier put on a tremendous display even landing in the nearby field a couple of times , big thanks to Dan and Michael for getting me to this site and for the use of their photo of the Pallid Harrier , now of to Aberdeen for the Sandhill Crane and then flying to Shetland for the week , part one of my trip to Aberdeen and Shetland to come in next post .