Yesterday I was leading the Hare walk  at WWT Welney as a volunteer I usually do the guide in the hide, swan feeds and the hare walks.

I like the hare walks because you get to see the hares running around, boxing or just keeping low and making an escape when you are nearly on top of them.

The stronghold of the Brown hare is East Anglia as they like arable fields and you are more likely to see them running around the fields here.

But yesterday I saw a sight I have never seen before as I was leading a group of sixteen people round somebody said ” is that a bird of prey over there? ” as I looked in the direction they were pointing I could see it was, in fact I could tell it was a harrier, but as we were facing into the sun and we had a sighting at Welney of a male Hen harrier earlier, I needed to try to see if it was a Marsh or Hen harrier, I set up my scope to watch the bird and as it got lower and out of the sun I could see it was a Marsh harrier, then I noticed on the ground a hare feeding and the harrier was getting lower and heading for the hare, I wondered what was going to happen next as a hare seemed to big for a harrier to take.

The harrier landed on the ground behind the hare and the hare turned round and faced the harrier, they were nose to beak and just sat here in a face off, I could not take a photograph as my lens was not good enough and they were quite away off.

I do not know if this was a fairly young harrier or if the hare was a female and wondered if she should fight off the advances of the harrier but they just sat there staring at each other, they could still be there now!.