The harrier who is actually a sparrowhawk

PALLID HARRIER

When you see an adult male pallid harrier chasing passerines for the first time, you rub your eyes one more time. A ghostly white and above all fast appearance. Females look more like sturdy hens with long wings, but when you see a male chasing songbirds, you immediately think of the ferocious flight of a sparrowhawk. Also in terms of ecology, pallids are substantially different from the more common types of harriers. When Ben Koks came face to face with a female irascible in winter barley in 2017 and saw 5 newborn siblings, it was clear that the very first breeding case in the Netherlands was a fact in that year.

Mark Avery wrote a blog about that exciting event: https://markavery.info/2017/07/14/pallid-harriers-nest-successfully-netherlands/

Nesting Pallid Harriers

In the meantime, nesting pallids have also appeared elsewhere in Europe. Partly pure pairs, pallid x pallid, sometimes pallid x Montagu’s and in at least two cases pallid x marsh harrier. Hybridization is relatively common in this species; it is not known why and what are the ecological consequences on population level. In 2019 good friends Beatriz Arroyo & François Mougeot found the very first pair of breeding pallids in Spain. The female turned out to have been born in 2017 in the nest that could be successfully protected in winter barley. Could coincidence really not exist? See their blog: https://www.birdguides.com/articles/conservation/pallid-harrier-breeds-in-spain-for-first-time/

The fact is that the understandable euphoria in European ornithological circles must be tempered. Although there are still many question marks about the status of pallids worldwide. What is known in the countries where the largest part of the world population can be found, the signals are red. Kazakhstan and Russia are seeing large-scale land use changes that will not benefit many types of steppes and similar open areas. The special thing is that it cannot be ruled out that pallids will be the same as montagu’s in the early nineties. A forced move from relatively intact and natural steppe zones to intensive large-scale area. Prisoners in a crazy agricultural farming system.

Elvira Werkman & Ben Koks wrote a book about Pallid Harrier, that is published in October 2022: Dwaalgast in het graan. Hopefully science-based ecological research and agroecology will enter into effective cooperation which helps pallids and the biodiversity of steppe-areas in the future..