An adult male marsh harrier was quartering the reedbed when I got down to Starman's Hall from Gupton Farm. We don't often see adult males here - mostly it's females and immatures. This one ranged the full length of the reedbed, hunted briefly over the fen meadow, and I even watched it against a backdrop of the Monterey pines at the inland end. It was shadowed for a minute or two by a grey heron - not mobbed exactly, but the heron was clearly following it down the reedbed. It is moulting its inner primaries.
Access is still pretty hard going, the track rough, and the hide is of limited use as it commands views of the western half of the Corse only, so you have to keep dodging through the hedge via the ditch crossing whenever harriers head upstream to keep them in view. There is a strimmed path down to the hide from the main track on the eastern side of the N-S hedgerow.
