I feel I’ve been slightly neglecting this blog for a couple of weeks for I was first travelling (and I have things to tell you about that) and then much of last week was taken up with working on our judicial review. Actually, there is nothing to feel guilty about there is there?
Today is, I am reliably informed, a full-on day of work with our lawyers and then I can start catching up with a long list of blog posts that I want and need to write.
So this is just a bit of tail-twisting of YFTB, or should that be YFtoidentifyTB?
I pointed out last week that YFTB have a stonking image of a male Montagu’s Harrier on their Hen Harrier web page. It’s utterly gorgeous, but it sure as hell, and very obviously, isn’t a Hen Harrier. Your average gamekeeper would probably know that, and some Police Wildlife Crime Officers (I wonder how many?) would know that too.
That’s the problem with getting your images from Shutterstock when you don’t know whether they are labelled correctly.
The other purported Hen Harrier image on the YFTB Hen Harrier page is this one…
Now this one is a bit more problematic. It is a brown harrier, a ringtail – and that means that it could be a female of any age or a young male. And it could be a Hen Harrier, Montagu’s Harrier, Pallid Harrier or Northern Harrier for starters. I’ve seen quite a lot of each of these over the years but where on Earth I was standing at the time was a big help in suggesting what I was looking at!
I’m grateful to a reader of this blog who knew what he was talking about and who contacted Dick Forsman – possibly (indeed quite probably) the world expert on raptor identification – about this image.
The amount of white on the underparts, and the underwing, and apparently on the upperwing, make it more or less certain that this is an immature male harrier rather than a female.
But which species? Dick’s view is that this looks (on the basis of plumage and wing formula) like a 2nd calendar year, summer, male, Pallid Harrier. It would help all of us if the bird would flap around for a while (and, although it would, in a way, be cheating, the geographic location of the bird would help) but it’s almost certainly neither a Montagu’s nor a Hen Harrier. Pallid x Hen Harrier hybrid is just possible.
So, nought out of two for YFtoidentifyTB – you have two species of harrier on your Hen Harrier webpage but neither is a Hen Harrier. Just the level of expertise we would expect from a bunch of townies, funded by city traders, who wouldn’t know a falcon from a faucet or a hawk from a hacksaw, or an eagle from an ewok, or a buzzard from a buzzsaw.
I’ll keep you updated on when or whether YFtoidentifyTB buys some authentic Hen Harrier images.
Meanwhile, here are some real Hen Harriers
A breath-taking food pass. Photo: Gordon Yates
Thor – a Hen Harrier fledged this summer in the Forest of Bowland but which has ‘mysteriously disappeared’ as so many do. Photo: Steve Downing
Annie – a Hen Harrier found shot on a Scottish grouse moor.
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Astroturf is green, but its not grass!
If I remember correctly Chris Packham (or whoever did the media thing) used a pic of an American Woodcock (as opposed to an ‘British Woodcock) a bit ago which caused a ruffling of feathers/amusement/criticism from various sources?
Just saying…..
Yes mistakes are made and no-one is immune from them. I am happy to confess that if Mark had not pointed out that the brown harrier does not look right I would probably not have noticed. The male depicted however is very obviously not a hen harrier to anyone with moderate birding skills so it’s a bad mistake and particularly so on a web-site that is seeking to cultivate the idea that the RSPB know much less about birds and their needs than does the game shooting industry as represented by YFTB. What makes the error worse is that the first incarnation of YFTB web-site contained a number of even more ludicrous identification mistakes so this time around you’d have to assume they been extra careful but they simply lacked the expertise necessary.
There is plenty of evidence that Chris Packham is an extremely well-informed naturalist and the woodcock image error can in that context be seen as one of those little errors that just slip through occasionally. One the other hand there is plenty of evidence that YFTB is rather ignorant about basic ecology and, in that context, the picture errors – whilst perhaps relatively inconsequential in themselves – can be seen as part of an overall picture of incompetence.
But did he quote an I/D at the species level – or just label it ‘Woodcock’?
A literary critic writes: the correct quotation from Hamlet is ‘ a hawk from a handsaw’. In view of the excellence of the rest of this post, however, you are forgiven …
Chris – I wasn’t quoting, if I had been I would have got it right. Very few ewoks in Shakespeare too.
My recollection is that the picture of the American Woodcock was quickly corrected and replaced once the error was pointed out. It will be interesting to find how long it takes YFTB to do the same (if at all). The error was uncorrected when I looked a few minutes ago. Perhaps the three silent dissenters who regularly vote down any sensible and well-informed posts by Mark forgot to pass on the information. Such a pity that they seem too gutless and/or ignorant to actually engage in debate here ….