Bird Photography · The Indian List
3 of 6 species photographed
Harriers hunt low. They quarter open ground at head height, tilting from side to side on wings held in a shallow V, listening as much as looking — the face is dished like an owl's for exactly that reason. Nothing else over Indian grassland flies quite that way, and you learn to pick one out at half a kilometre by the flight alone.
Photographing them is a problem of prediction rather than patience. The bird is moving, low, and usually going away from you; the moment worth having is the turn, when it banks and the underwing comes into the light. Most of the winter they are on stubble and fallow at first light, and the good frames come in the twenty minutes when the sun is low enough to fill that underwing and bright enough to freeze it.
Identification is the other problem. Adult males are distinctive. Females and juveniles — the ringtails — are a genuine test, and honest birders leave some of them unnamed. Where I could not be sure, the frames below say so.
Bulkier and heavier than the grassland harriers, and tied to wetlands. The commonest harrier over most Indian marshes in winter.
Replaces Western Marsh Harrier in the east of its range and overlaps with it. Males are patterned black and grey rather than plain brown.
Heavier and broader-winged than Montagu's or Pallid, with a more laboured flight. The male is grey with a clean black wingtip and a white rump.
Adult males are paler and cleaner than Montagu's, with a narrow black wedge at the wingtip and no black secondary bar. Juveniles are warm unstreaked buff below with a dark ear-covert patch and a bold pale collar. Separating ringtail Pallid from ringtail Montagu's in the field is a well-known difficulty.
The male is unmistakable and unlike any other Indian harrier — black, white and grey in bold blocks. The female is another ringtail.
Photographs by Fareed Mohmed
Photograph by Fareed Mohmed
