New Forest and Pennington

Saturday 27th January 2007


nuthatch

Weather wise it wasn’t looking too bad.   Dry and not as cold as earlier in the week, so off we headed to the coast.

Not sure how it happened but we ended up in the Arboretum at Blackwater. Butterflies were everywhere, a red admiral even landed on me.  It felt more like a spring day than a winters one.

We saw some goldcrests and a wren and later on  a few hawfinches arrived. Then we went to the other side of the woods and saw a treecreeper,nuthatch and a great spotted woodpecker, various tits and finches, robins, blackbirds and I noticed a buzzard overhead.

62. treecreeper

After our picnic lunch we headed down to Pennington to see if we could find some pintails.

We parked the car at Pennington Marshes and on the walk down to the coast we met a lady birder we have seen down there many times before.   She said she  was on the look out for some Ruffs. She thought  we would probably see a Kingfisher down on the lagoons now that most of the people had gone home. She also said we would see some pintails.

She wasn’t wrong, within five minutes we had seen some pintails and two kingfishers! We also saw the Slavonian Grebe she said was  close to the shore.

Two female Red Breasted Mergansers were on the lagoon and a Kingfisher came along and seemed to bump into one of them. Could the Kingfisher have been taking a fish from the Red Breasted Merganser?? I’m not quite sure what happened there.

There were more surprises to come though.... five spotted redshanks and one greenshank, fairly rare this time of the year I would think.

Then on the way home I noticed some daffodils in Lymington, the first ones I have seen this year.


63. pintail
64. kingfisher
65. slavonian grebe
66. greenshank
67. spotted redshank
68. red-legged partridge (sowley)

Sturt Pond and Pennington Lagoon

Sunday 21st January 2007


meadow pipit

I often wake up in the mornings with a song in my head, I'm sure I must sing in my sleep! Todays song is... Lucky Day, by Chris Rea.   And with the sun pouring in through the window I thought, yes, maybe this will be my lucky day!

We decided to go down to Milford-on-Sea in the hope of seeing the Bearded Tits seen there yesterday. It was high tide and we couldn't get to the other side of sturt pond with  so much water on the path. So we took a detour through the field and saw our first meadow pipit of the year.

Later on we stopped at Pennington Marshes and went for a walk down to the sea.  We were looking for Pintails but unfortunately we  didn't see any. Then just as we were going to call it a day I noticed a group of ducks further along Pennington Lagoon. As we got closer to them I could see they were Red-breasted Mergansers. Fantastic! I've only ever seen them in books before. There were 5 drakes and 5 females all diving under the water together. What a way to end the day and it made up for not seeing the Pintails and the Bearded Tits.

57. meadow pipit
58. rook
59. red-breasted merganser

PS - It's only January but we had a bumble  bee in our kitchen today!

Keyhaven

Saturday 20th January 2007



By the time we were ready to leave home the rain had stopped and it was bright and sunny although very windy. We went to Keyhaven on the Hampshire Coast a favourite place of mine.

Saturdays are quiet in Keyhaven during the winter months.  Just the way I like it. We walked the sea wall to Pennington and saw lots of lovely birds including a large flock of lapwing flying overhead.  Just perfect against the bright blue sky. There are various lagoons along the way and you never know just what will turn up in each one. We were walking back to the carpark via the inland road when the heavens opened. Thankfully the rain didn't last long and afterwards a beautiful rainbow appeared in the sky.

49. turnstone
50. shelduck
51. wigeon
52. shoveler
53. lapwing
54. teal
55. moorhen
56. dunnock