Western Marsh Harrier - Description

Description

The Western Marsh-harrier is 43 to 54 cm in length, and has a wingspan of 115 to 130 cm and a weight of 400 to 650 g in males and 500 to 800 g in females. It is a large, bulky harrier with fairly broad wings, and has a strong and peculiar sexual dichromatism. The male's plumage is mostly a cryptic reddish-brown with lighter yellowish streaks, which are particularly prominent on the breast. The head and shoulders are mostly pale greyish-yellowish. The rectrices and the secondary and tertiary remiges are pure grey, the latter contrasting with the brown forewing and the black primary remiges at the wingtips. The upperside and underside of the wing look similar, though the brown is lighter on the underwing. Whether from the side or below, flying males appear characteristically three-colored brown-grey-black. The legs, feet, irides and the cere of the black bill are yellow.

The female is almost entirely chocolate-brown. The top of the head, the throat and the shoulders have of a conspicuously lighter yellowish colour; this can be clearly delimited and very contrasting, or (particularly in worn plumage) be more washed-out, resembling the male's head colors. But the eye area of the female is always darker, making the light eye stand out, while the male's head is altogether not very contrastingly colored and the female lacks the grey wing-patch and tail. Juveniles are similar to females, but usually have less yellow, particularly on the shoulders.

There is a rare hypermelanic morph with largely dark plumage. It is most often found in the east of the species' range. Juveniles of this morph may look entirely black in flight.

  • Upperside of adult male at Šiauliai (Lithuania)

  • Adult female - Lago di Alviano (Italy)

  • Underside of adult male near Halle, Saxony-Anhalt (Germany)

  • Underside of adult female wintering near Hodal (Faridabad district, Haryana, India)

  • Hypermelanic adult female wintering near Bangalore (Karnataka, India)

  • Immatures wintering near Hodal (Faridabad district, Haryana, India)

Read more about this topic:  Western Marsh Harrier

Famous quotes containing the word description:

    He hath achieved a maid
    That paragons description and wild fame;
    One that excels the quirks of blazoning pens.
    William Shakespeare (1564–1616)

    The Sage of Toronto ... spent several decades marveling at the numerous freedoms created by a “global village” instantly and effortlessly accessible to all. Villages, unlike towns, have always been ruled by conformism, isolation, petty surveillance, boredom and repetitive malicious gossip about the same families. Which is a precise enough description of the global spectacle’s present vulgarity.
    Guy Debord (b. 1931)

    Do not require a description of the countries towards which you sail. The description does not describe them to you, and to- morrow you arrive there, and know them by inhabiting them.
    Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)