Incredible evening

On Thursday 17th April, after work at 6pm I drove to Corton Church, I walked down to Broadland Sands, where I saw Rob H on his cycle, We met up and walked down the road to the site oppoiste at 6.08pm, incredibly Rob shouted Pallid Harrier and instantaneously I saw a Harrier flying around 40 metres away flying low over the field heading east/ south/ east towards Broadland Sands. I concentrated on the wing tips and could clearly see 2 clearly defined black wedges in the underwing primaries, clearly it was a Pallid Harrier, possibly a third calendar year male. It was generally greyish but showed a buffish suffusions too. The wings appeared typically broad based. We lost the bird through the tree/ hedgeline. Rob decided to check to Corton Old Sewage works, whilst I decided to check the field margin walking parallel with the road south, I walked up to a big a mound area and incredibly barely 10 metres away, at point blank range!! The fantastic 3rd calendar year male Pallid Harrier flew up from the ground at 6.32pm, I had inadvertently flushed it! It had a young rabbit clasped within its talons. Here I could clearly see, for a Harrier species, the broad-based wings, the generally greyish upperparts with the buffish suffusion, and the white upper-tail coverts or white was much smaller rump appearing a more restricted 'U' shaped lacking the white square prominence of the Hen Harrier rump. The tail was long generally grey but with a some very diffuse buffish barring, only see when the bird flew up 20 metres away. The underparts were generally white with a dark grey 'boaa' and agrey streaked head with white suercilia short black bill, yellow eye with black pupil. The bird flew low west over the field and lost it within the tree line. At the time in the field just west a tractor was cutting the grass short so I assumed it had avoided this area and I assumed maybe it had flown further west perhaps to the fields by Stirrups Lane? I walked to the road and was pleased to see James W had seen it. I walked down Stirrups Lane, saw Andrew E, James B, Rob Wil, they would stay there and I decided to walk back to the field and walk along the tree line carefully scanning as I went, after everyone agreed with this plan, I retraced my steps back to the field and unfortunately I could see a dog walker with a particularly yappy small terrier dog on a very long lead and it was imperative that I had to get ahead and walked quicker than I would have liked, as I approached the mounds by the trees, the fantastic Pallid Harrier flew up again about 50 metres way at 7.10pm and it flew low north between the treeline to the west and the mound to the right and I lost it behind the trees, it was great that the rest of the assembled birders along Stirrups Lane all saw it fly north-west over the fields at Stirrups Lane flying towards Lound. Carl B. texted to say the Hoopoe was back opposite Broadland Sands only problem was I was a 3/4 mile away along Stirrup's Lane, fortuntely Rob Wil stopped and gave me a lift in his car, which afforded me 2 minutes viewing the fine Hoopoe feeding which was nice, it typically flew west as I was assembling the camera for some hoped for record shots. TBC [PICS COURTESY OF ROB HOLMES, MY ESPECIAL THANKS].