Wood Warblers

Sunday 3rd June 2007

We knew yesterday would be hard to beat so we decided not to go looking for birds for the list, instead we popped to Milkham Enclosure to see if the Crossbills were there again.

We did the right thing as the wood was very quiet with only a few others out walking.


crossbill - a terrible photo I know!

It wasn't long before we saw some Crossbills, two young ones and an adult Male and there were more of them in the trees behind.

Mind you it really is difficult to get even a record photo as the trees are so tall!! If we ever get a scope then we can try digiscoping and maybe that will be better.

Other birds at Milkham were Chaffinches, a Buzzard, Wrens, a Great Spotted Woodpecker and then just like magic a pair of Wood Warblers appeared which was a bit of a shock to me as I somehow hadn't expected to see Wood Warblers in Milkham Enclosure. Just shows how little I know!!


A male crossbill - honestly!!

121. Wood Warblers

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