Jack snipe and hen harrier to end a great week at Pennington Flash

It's been a memorable week at the flash. It started well with the discovery of two scaup with the tufted ducks at the west end on Tuesday, and just got better as the week progressed, with a jack snipe yesterday and a hen harrier today, the latter a site first for me. On top of that there's been a noticeable build up of ducks, including at least 29 goldeneye and 10 pochard. Not big numbers yet but double what there were last week.

No doubt that the hen harrier was the highlight of the week. I was in Horrock's hide this morning and saw a raptor flying towards me over the ruck, high and at first distant, but it clearly had the flight of a harrier on passage, with a few fairly fast wing-beats followed by a short glide, at which time it held its wings in a shallow 'V'. It flew towards the hide and dropped a little before banking slightly left and then heading off east to the left of the hide allowing me a decent enough view to see that it was a hen harrier. What a fabulous sight it was and I wished that I'd been on the ruck to see it better. Any species of harrier is a decent record at the flash, though hen and marsh both occur on the mosslands to the south so are always a possibility.

Yesterday morning I was in Horrock's hide between about 9am - 9.30am and didn't see a single snipe. I was confident that none were present since even when the lapwings on the spit flushed, no snipe went up with them. At the same time, Ian was on the ruck at the point watching at least 48 snipe and a jack snipe on the spit! Of course they were in the vegetation and hidden from me, and I wasn't helped by the fact that when the spit got a rough cut the other week, they very annoyingly left a large tuft of vegetation on the left hand side which completely obliterates the view along that edge from Horrock's. 

However, in the afternoon I went back and headed straight for an unobstructed view on the point. It was a dull day and even with a scope many of the snipe were quite difficult to spot so I didn't hold out much hope of finding the jack snipe at this distance. I remember the bird we saw on Barra in October, little more than 5m in front of us in vegetation much shorter than the spit, but we didn't see it until it moved. The bird I was now trying to find was at least 300m away.

Fortunately though, the species habit of bobbing finally gave it away and once I knew where it was I got quite a reasonable view. Jack snipe probably aren't that rare at the flash, but their secretive nature and a lack of suitable habitat make them quite a rare sight these days. The two images above and below show how difficult the bird was to spot, but when you see it bobbing in the video it's not difficult at all.

A bobbing jack snipe.

Unfortunately these are the only photos I have of the harrier which are anywhere near usable. Obviously a harrier but not really helpful when it comes to determining the species, although perhaps you can see that it is long-tailed and appears to have black wing tips and a black trailing edge to the underwing. In the field it was clearly a hen harrier though.