Titchfield Haven NNR

Saturday 31st March 2007


peacock butterfly

The London Camera Exchange were having an event at Titchfield Haven and as we are thinking of buying a scope we decided to pop along. It was nice to be able to try out half a dozen scopes in different price ranges. The sales people were very helpful and although we didn't buy one this time, we now feel we know a little bit more about them.



After lunch we had a good walk around the reserve and saw lots of different birds, some peacock, comma and brimstone butterflies and a roe deer.
The highlight was the Guide in a Hide, a very nice man who let us use his scope and pointed out the differences between black-headed and mediterranean gulls.


spot the avocet!

Another nice surprise was seeing a few Avocets, a bird I thought I would have to go to Devon to see.

94. mediterranean gull
95. avocet

The Goldfinches Have Arrived!

Friday 30th March 2007

I was so pleased to see a couple of Goldfinches in my garden this morning. I noticed six of them on the tree in the courtyard at the back of our house a couple of weeks ago and put out some niger seed and waited.... Now I've seen them in our garden three times this morning which is just fantastic!

Skylark

Sunday 25th March 2007



This must have been the warmest day we have had this year, hopefully it will last and not go back to the freezing hail showers of last week.


male pheasant

We were walking part of the Solent Way today and heard our first Skylark of the year. We looked up and there it was high in the sky singing it's little socks off!



The trees and hedgerows were alive with tits, dunnocks, sparrows, wrens, robins, blackbirds, greenfinches, and we even saw a green woodpecker, kestrel and a beautiful male reed buntng. Pheasants on the lanes and rabbits, horses and a fox in the fields, plus spring flowers and blossom everywhere. On the coast were some brent geese, canada geese and lots of gulls including a couple of lesser black- backed.



92. skylark
93. lesser black-backed gull

The Magic of the New Forest

Saturday 24th March 2007


A White Deer in the New Forest

Each week I hear of someone or other seeing Crossbills in the New Forest but everytime we are there we never see any, so today we decided it was time to have a proper look for them.

Milkham Enclosure near Bolderwood was our first choice of places to look and when we arrived at around 8.30am the wood was alive with birds. We didn't see any Crossbills at first and then just as we were heading back to the car I saw a couple of birds fly across to a tree in front of us. I looked through the binoculars and I could see a male Crossbill and then a female Crossbill, fantastic! We both had good views for well over 10 minutes. I thought seeing the Crossbills was probably as good as it was going to get today, but how wrong can you be.........

Walking in Bolderwood five minutes later we saw seven male Fallow Deer. Nothing strange about seeing Deer in the New Forest, except that one of them was a beautiful White Buck.

American Indians believed that catching a glimpse of a White Deer was the first step toward prosperity and good luck. I don’t know about that, but all I can say is that having seen lots of Deer over the years, that White Buck was truely a joy to see.



To finish off what was already a very special morning we decided to pop to Blashford Lakes.

We don’t always check out all the bird hides at Blashford as sometimes we just go for a walk in the woods but as we were feeling lucky we decided to have a look in each hide. Just as well we did as from each hide there was a new bird for the year list!


siskins

Gadwall from hide one, Siskins from hide two and a male Garganey from the third hide. We wouldn't have spotted the Garganey ourselves, but a very nice man pointed it out to us and let us have a look through his scope. What a great morning, four new birds and a very special white deer......it really couldn't get much better than this!


88. crossbill
89. gadwall
90. siskin
91. garganey

Milford-on-Sea

Saturday 17th March 2007 - Happy St. Patrick's Day everyone!



During the week I was watching Masterchef on TV and had to smile when I realised that one of the finalists has cooked for me in my home.......... but that as they say is another story!



We went down to Milford-on-Sea this morning, stopping at Applemore Recreation Centre on the way to buy a Parking Clock. The clock covers most of the New Forest District Council area, but not the beach car parks and saves us a small fortune. Apart from Milford-on Sea, it can be used in places like Ringwood, Fordingbridge, Hythe, Brockenhurst, Lymington etc; so well worth the £8.



It was much busier down in Milford today, spring is here and lots more people are out and about again after their winter hybernation. We did a walk of Sturt Pond and saw lots of Brent Geese fly in and land on the pond, I guess they won't be around for much longer.


snowdrops and daffodils

Then we walked up the hill by the coast and back down through the village, it was blowing a gale so hardly any birds about, but there were lots of spring flowers to look at along the way.


camelia


clematis

Blashford Lakes

Sunday 11th March 2007


Goldfinch

It was a beautiful sunny afternoon and we decided to go to Blashford Lakes to see the birds and have a walk in the woods.

In the car park we saw a Mistle Thrush on top of a tree then another one flew over and sat on the fence and we were able to watch them for five minutes or so. Then we walked towards the centre and on one of the feeders was a Great Spotted Woodpecker, I've never seen one that close before, such a beautiful bird.

I always enjoy my trips to Blashford and today it was even more magical with drifts of wild daffodils and bird song everywhere. I love to stand in the woods with my eyes closed and just listen to the birds, so good for the soul.


wild daffodils at Blashford

We walked down to the woodland hide and saw Goldfinches, Chaffinches, Long-Tailed Tits, Green Finches, Blue Tits, Great Tits, Blackbirds, Robins a Wren, lots of Squirrels and the Pheasant was back on the feeders again. Then as we left the hide and were watching the birds in the trees I noticed a Sparrowhawk overhead and everything went very quiet......


one of the rarer species at Blashford!

87. sparrowhawk

Orange Moon

Sunday 4th March 2007


Orange Moon

My nephew was over from Norn Iron and called to see us last night with a friend. There was a lunar eclipse so we spent the latter part of the evening outside watching it. Luckily it was a clear night so there was a beautiful star filled sky above us. The whole experience was quite magical, if a wee bit on the cold side!

Nothing on the bird front today. The weather was appalling and on top of that our heating and hot water boiler has broken down and as we don't have an emersion heater we are now having to boil the kettle for hot water and having to wash at the sink. At least we have a log burner in the front room but the rest of the house is freezing cold, hopefully it will be fixed tomorrow!

Two new birds.

Saturday 3rd March 2007



Last week I mentioned my night out at the Nuffield Theatre and I now see they are using some of what I said in their advertising, fame at last, ha! ha!

We were having a non birding day out today and stopped near Fordingbridge to have a look at the map when three Redwings landed in the tree beside us! Then on the way home we stopped at Black Gutter Bottom for five minutes and a Hen Harrier flew in front of the car! Looks like the non birding days can produce some excellent results! Both of these birds are lifers for me.

85. redwing
86. hen harrier