Sadly missed by others again.
On to Lavell's car park field, plenty of hirundines trickling thru, a few Meadow Pipits, then 4 Raven going East for a change at 08:50. 7 Ring-necked Parakeet landed in the trees by Lea Farm, but not much was happening, so I told John I was heading off.
At the car park, with my boot open ready all my sentiments of it being a bit quiet were about to vanish, when I looked up and lifted my bins to an all dark Buzzard sized raptor just going over us about 400 feet plus heading NW, "is that a raptor" I said to John, swapping to my scope it was gliding away from us quite quickly, on level wings, but without a flap.
First impressions thru the bins were that it was all black, pointed wings, not hugely broad, or deep, perhaps due to the angle it looked small headed, in the scope it was all the body parts and the under wings were very dark brown and I couldn't see any pale feathers in the primaries, it had a slightly longer tail than a Buzzard. "come on turn I said as it continued on in a straight line", finally as it got to around Lodge Wood, it turned and I expected to be able to say it had nice deep secondaries, or nice square wings and pale upper forewing and crown. But neither were apparent and this stumped me completely and even though I had been thinking "I might have a Honey Buzzard" but after it turned I could see that the tail was definitely a bit longer, but couldn't see how the wings shape added up to one, so I strained to see something else on it. And as it turned back towards us for a moment I thought I might be able to see pale on the fore crown.
As I was watching it I kept thinking is this a harrier, could it be a dark morph Montague's? But it was too big and thick set for that, Pallid, or Hen.
25-30 seconds isn't that long on a fly over bird of any sort, raptors present all sorts of problems and often light is a massive factor, but this time I couldn't understand why it hadn't been obvious from the very start.
After a bird has gone without confirming it's ID, there is little more you can do, scribble some notes if you have pencil and paper...I didn't, so had to wait until I got home to peruse images of all ages of Marsh Harrier, dark morph's of both Monty's and Honey Buzzard.
My conclusions which can hardly be called that, on probability it was a Marsh Harrier, but it didn't look much like one, because when it was closest too us, it lacked wing span, tail length and overall size.
From images I've found online it looked more like was a dark morph Booted Eagle
https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiTgN7uEe5SHvcWrx8zNjYYgXmcSfRt8stFE7D7O31wEvIdHpRW2dtWIszeUPh2pOxpr2GDlS98uWwwZVfShwjYWhqXPucbZ2C2QkPW1Dq5R3bX0VWIstwyN9yFRPSzLwDQzQTGUna7RrM/s1600/Aqpen4Vilamoura09Jan2015.jpg
or
Image 26 of 39 on this chaps blog
http://blogbirder.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/raptor-watching-sakhalvasho-batumi-24th.html
In the real world I cannot really allow myself to imagine it was one, it is just too unlikely isn't it!??
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