mercy mission

No matter how many 100's of hours I spend watching raptors and thinking I know where their nests are some always fool me; until I saw a female harrier drop into a rape field with food I thought her nest was 200m away; as the farmer was intending cutting the field within days he agreed to avoid the nest area if I could mark it out-I was concerned that the young may have been small and not particularly visible from a tall machine hence the morning mercy mission involving climbing (the term is literal) through about 300m of head high oilseed rape after a night of heavy rain---fortunately one of the two youngsters was just able to fly and the other one close to fledging so hopefully they will be on the wing by the time the field is cut but the nest area is now marked off----thanks to Mark for steering me along the right line through the crop and the farm manager for taking an interest in his birds;