Harrier, Pallid or Montagu's?

[Christian Brinkman]

On the 4th of May me and a couple of friends were watching migration at Breskens. Earlier on that day we had a circus we couldn't really identify, partially by the lack of ID skills on harriers, partially because the bird was so damn far away. When the 2nd 'good looking' harrier passed I decided to go after it (needed a driver though..). When we located the bird, other people came to see it and at the moment we ID'd it as a Hen harrier (with slightly narrow wings) a 2nd harrier was discovered making hight just behind us.
This harrier was far more elegant and we drove towards it. It was making hight quickly so we couldn't get good views, we managed to get a few pictures and lost the bird while it was gliding towards the northeast.

We regrouped and looked at the pictures on the camera's. The bird was ID'd as a Montagu's, some of us were not that convinced and with the excuse 'We need to see them on the computer' the case was closed for that moment.
Now that we have seen the pictures on the computer we think this might be a Pallid, due to the lack of experience with harriers with us we can't clinch the ID by ourselfs (whether it's a Pallid or Montagu's).
May we have your verdicts please!

The left pictures are the original, the right are made lighter with Photoshop.
http://forum.waarneming.nl/forum/uploads/post-104-1210923669.jpg

With best regards,
Teun van Kessel, Thijs Fijen, Tjeerd Burger and Christian Brinkman

[stenura]

Rather heavy body, broad winged and a blunt wing-tip. It's hard to make much out of the wing patterns, but the primaries seem a bit pale. My guess would be Hen Harrier.

[Christian Brinkman]

At the same time as I posted this a few people replied to our thread on our Dutch forum that they thought this to be a Hen.
We never considered Hen since this bird was very elegant (like Montagu's I saw last year and a few weeks before). Funny thing is that if this is a Hen that from 5 Montagu's harriers in that week (+ 1 bird few weeks earlier) 3 were incorrectly identified, that's 60%! Is it just us Dutch lads who can't ID harriers or are they generally a bit hard to 'do'?

[Joe stockwell]

there a bit hard!

[JanJ]

Strange how you sometimes, when you see some images of a certain bird at first feel quite comfortable with your immediate impression, and yet, because the bird show some character that you feel shouldn´t be there, like the harrier here, which I had down as female Pallid, due to different jizz than Montagu´s, broad arm - narrow hand, pale hand , dark arm, pale-tipped innner primaries and a pale band in the middle of the secondaries,which didn´t seem to reach the body.The underwing is difficult to see properly, not to mention the head pattern and the seemingly not especially obvious pale collar, but there seems to be much white around the eye, which together with the long p5, which is embarrassing for Pallid, suggest a female looking Hen Harrier. Has the moult in inner primaries started? Maybe a little early.

Female Pallid Oman Dec. (Juha Niemi).

http://www.tarsiger.com/images/Jniemi/cirmac4copy72.jpg

Oman Nov. (Tom Lindroos)

http://www.tarsiger.com/images/linto/CirmacKI6W3378.jpg

Although this female Hen has 4 fingers - KMO in his answer points out that the inner primaries are not shorter than the secondaries, as in Pallid, that is to say, the inners countinues in a straight line directly on to the secondaries.

http://www.netfugl.dk/pictures.php?id=showpicture&picture_id=11043

also seen here:

http://www.netfugl.dk/pictures.php?id=showpicture&picture_id=11164

http://www.netfugl.dk/pictures.php?id=showpicture&picture_id=10851

JanJ