In winter found on fields and rough pasture, particularly coastal areas, marshes and often roosts communally in favoured reedbeds. Description Typical harrier shape and V-shaped wings. Male strickingly pale with white and grey but with black wing tips. As we enjoyed watching hundreds of them flying in to a stubble field to rest and doze in the midday sun, my wife spotted a ring-tail hen harrier quartering a beet field yet to be harvested. Gracefully and effortlessly the harrier glided low over the ground before half-turning with tail fanned and then quickly stalling before dropping.
Hen harriers are winter visitors to East Anglia.
Most arrive from mid-September, but pioneers have put in appearances from as early as August. The majority have returned to breeding grounds by late March, but stragglers have lingered locally until the end of May. There are indications that a higher proportion of male hen harriers winter in the milder parts of Britain than in the north and east. Hen harriers formerly nested in the Fens and Broads, the last occasion in Norfolk being at Horsey in 1861. In Suffolk there is convincing evidence of attempted nesting at Tuddenham in 1929.