The Harrier That Tips Side to Side Like It's Had One Too Many
Okay, so we're into raptors now, which means we're leaving the water and looking up over the fields instead. This is the module I get the most excited to teach, and I'll tell you why in a minute. But first, the harrier.
Northern harriers are the hawk you'll see cruising low over open fields, marshland, that scrubby ground out past the trail where nobody's built anything yet. And for a long time I could not tell them apart from a rough-legged hawk to save my life. Same kind of habitat, similar size, both of them out there in winter working the same fields. I'd see one flying and just shrug.
Then one morning it clicked, and I mean it clicked all at once, the way things sometimes do after you've been confused about them for months.
What to look for
A harrier flies low, usually not more than ten or twenty feet off the ground, and it doesn't fly straight. It tips. One wing dips, then the other, back and forth, like it's had one too many. That's not a bad flying day for the bird, that's just how they hunt. They're using that wobble to help them hear and see prey in the grass, and once you've watched one do it, you cannot unsee it. It's one of my favorite things to point out on a walk because people's faces change the second they get it.
A rough-legged hawk, by comparison, is going to be soaring higher, more controlled, often hovering in place with its wings beating to hold position over one spot, kind of like a kestrel does but bigger. Steadier. No wobble.
Here's the other tell, and it's a good one for low light, which is basically all we get out there in the morning. Look at the tail as the bird flies away from you. Harriers have a white patch right at the base of the tail, up near the rump. You'll see it flash even when the rest of the bird is just a gray shape against gray sky. I lean on that white patch more than almost anything else in this module, because a lot of our winter mornings are exactly the kind of flat light where color on the body doesn't tell you much of anything.
That's the opinion I keep coming back to in this class: learn shape and behavior before you learn color. Color lies to you in bad light, and 8am out by the lake in January is bad light basically every single day. Shape and movement don't lie. A wobbling flight and a white rump patch will tell you "harrier" faster than trying to work out if that's brown or gray or something in between.
Practical steps for home
You can practice a lot of this without leaving your house, which I like, because it's low key and it doesn't cost anything.
- Look up video of a harrier hunting, just a short clip, and watch the wing motion specifically. Don't watch the whole bird, watch one wingtip. See the dip.
- Then look up a rough-legged hawk hovering. Notice how still and controlled it looks by comparison.
- Do this twice, a day or two apart. I really do think it helps to let it sit overnight. Your brain sorts it out while you're not trying.
- When you're out on the trail, don't reach for the binoculars first. Watch the flight path with your eyes for a few seconds. Is it low and wobbly, or higher and steady? Only then bring the binoculars up to check color and markings.
That order matters more than people expect. If you go straight to binoculars you're hunting for detail before you've even asked the bigger question, which is how is this thing moving through the air.
I mentioned my notebook a while back in this course, the one I've kept since that first winter. Half of it is birds and the other half is just notes about who I ran into on the trail that week, whose grandkid started college, who was walking with a new dog. I went back through it looking for the day I finally got the harrier sorted out, and it's in there, one line, "finally get it, the tipping." No fanfare. Just that I got it. I like that it's sitting next to a note about someone's daughter's wedding. That's kind of how the whole notebook works and honestly how the whole hobby works for me. The birds and the people end up on the same page, literally.
One real caution here: when you're watching something low and moving fast across a field, it's easy to walk right off the trail or into a rut without looking down. Happened to me. Keep half an eye on your footing, especially if the ground's frozen and uneven, which it will be most mornings this time of year.
Before next time
See if you can spot a harrier this week, even from the car. Watch for the wobble before you look for anything else, and see if the white rump patch gives it away when the light's bad.