Song-birder.......

Saturday 5th April 2008

We went to Blashford this morning, straight to the woodland hide, hoping to see a Lesser Redpoll.

I must admit, I'm not the best birdwatcher in Hampshire. I have a habit of breaking out into song - which doesn't go down too well in the bird hides!! If anyone's interested, today's song was..........ain't no sunshine when she's gone.... One of the male birders must have enjoyed it, as he left his friends and came and sat next to me!!

There were lots of nice birds to see, including...

great spotted woodpecker
greenfinches
siskins
blackbird
chaffinches
brambling
great tits
blue tits
long tailed tits

great spotted woodpecker

and then a Lesser Redpoll appeared, our target bird for today, and a lifer for me......


lesser redpoll

The woodland hide at Blashford, is also a good place to see Lesser Spotted Woodpeckers. We saw two this morning, one male and one female. I was always led to believe that Lesser spotted are seen high up in the trees...... well don't believe everything you read in the books. The female we saw today, was on a tree trunk about six feet up from the ground.


you can just make out a female lesser spotted woodpecker

That was it......the morning was gone, and we were heading down to Hythe. On the way, we stopped at the Shatterford car park and noticed a pile of tyres which someone has decided to dump there....


a blot on the landscape....

Later this afternoon we saw two Red-legged Partridges in Hoe Lane......

114. lesser redpoll
115. red-legged partridge

Seeing is Believing......

Thursday 17th January 2008

I’ve been having a good time lately, thanks to my nephew coming to stay and my new computer arriving :-) . And of course there were the birds last Saturday morning..... now that was something special......

We went in search of the resident Little Owl in Hill Street, I've been looking for that owl for months, but I’ve never seen it. Unfortunately we didn’t manage to see it this time either, but we did see eleven redwings in a field at Hill Street and 30+ Fieldfares, further down the road, so I was more than happy with that.


Redwing

Then we decided to go up to Palestine near Grately, to look for some Brambling and Grey legged Partridges. As the passenger in the car, I got to do some birdwatching as we went along, but little did I know, just what I would see......

We were on the B3084 from Broughton to Over Wallop, when I saw a bird on a telegraph pole. I’m used to seeing Kestrels, Peregrines or Buzzards sitting on telegraph poles, but what I was seeing was no Kestrel, Peregrine or Buzzard. This was something I had never seen before....this was an Eagle!!

I couldn’t believe my eyes, how fantastic. I told Ian what I had seen and asked him to stop the car, but he totally ignored me and drove on!!!!!!! I was gutted......it’s not everyday I get to see an Eagle in Hampshire.


Kestrel

We crossed the A343 into Mount Carmel Road and Ian stopped the car. I was thinking of the Eagle and how I wished we had stopped to have a good look at it, but to be honest I don’t think Ian believed I had seen an Eagle.

Then we got out of the car and were looking at some Fieldfares in the fields, when a 4x4 vehicle stopped and the driver shouted over, “did you see the Eagle".

We walked over to his car to find out more. He said a Sea Eagle (otherwise known as a White tailed Eagle) had been in the area for a month or so. A young bird from Finland he said. That’s when the penny dropped. I remembered reading on BirdForum about a White-tailed Eagle in Hampshire, somewhere near Andover.

Now, looking at the map, I could see we weren’t a million miles from Shipton Bellinger, where the bird has been seen. And according to the man we were speaking to, the Eagle was also a regular in Grately, less than a mile away.


Grandfather's Beard

I guess fifteen minutes or so had gone by since I saw the Eagle, so we decided to forget the Brambling and head back to where the Eagle was, on the off chance it would still be there.

Five minutes later we were back at the spot, and there it was, still sitting on top of the pole. Unfortunately it flew off before I could take a pic.........

If anyone would like better details of where we saw it, then email me.......my email address is working again.

Eve.

70. fieldfare
71. redwing
72. treecreeper
73. kestrel
74. white-tailed eagle
75. pheasant