A male Hen Harrier hunting

We’ve come to look for the Short-Eared Owl. Instead, as I pull up the car, there’s a male Hen Harrier heading over the fields towards us.

I slip out of the car door and hide behind the car as I take a few frames. It plummets dramatically to the floor in a farmyard up the lane and then it’s off, hugging the hills as if magnetically repelled, and forced to keep over a metre from the ground.

It’s the first male I’ve ever seen.

I’m buzzing about it for days.