Tuesday
9th February 2016 Light W Mostly Sunny, One heavy
Hail shower PM
Through
Lyndhurst, New Forest, I pause at a shop window. I must have what I
see and enter the charity shop to buy such a wonderful item. It goes
onto the back of Oscar the Orca and next to Scaggy the Rabbit.
The
charity being supported by the shop is the Shaw Trust, a charity for
helping disabled people into work, a very worthy cause and thank you
Penny, the friendly lady at the counter, for pointing out Tigger's
features to me.
To
Acre's Down, I hide the bike and walk up a ridge. I have four target
birds today; goshawk, hawfinch, lesser spotted woodpecker and
crossbills. As soon as I reach the top of the ridge I can see a
goshawk patrolling over a distant forest.
I
walk another few hundred yards along the ridge, through silver birch
and holly woodland and out onto gorse and heather heath. From a end
viewpoint I sit and watch as the goshawk still flies along high over
the trees.
Another
birder, John, an ecologist from Oxford, joins me and we watch as the
goshawk is joined by a larger female. The views of this pair are the
best I have had of goshawk for a number of years. Previously I have
watched these magnificent birds of prey at New Fancy RSPB viewpoint
in the Forest of Dean, Gloucestershire. This pair are much closer.
John finds another one perched up on a tree quite some distance from
us. I then see two hawfinches fly past us just after a raven
has cronked it's way past us. Both sparrowhawk and buzzard pass us
too.
I
leave John to explore the woodland down in the valley and immediately
notice a small herd of roe deer beneath some small holly trees. I
kneel to photograph them just as a low flying goshawk glides past.
Deep
in the wood of oak, beech and silver birch I find a fallen tree and
sit on it in the hope that birds will pass. A very quick sparrowhawk
does but little else in half an hour or so.
Moving
along through the holly and alder trees, negotiating deep muddy
depressions, I continue to search for birds yet seeing very few. A
few long-tailed tits are in the birch canopy and there is the
occasional singing robin. On reaching a gravelly bridleway, I stop as
a great spotted woodpecker is drumming on a nearby oak tree. It tries
one branch but it isn't resonant enough. It moves to another and the
staccato sound produced is much more to the bird's liking.
A
small flock of chaffinches lands on twigs of a silver birch nearby
and then a flock of four crossbills lands on a tall oak behind
them.
The
blue sky has been replaced by threatening dark grey clouds and the
hail that falls so intensely for twenty minutes or so covers the
ground like snow.
The
year lost now stands at 158 and may be seen on Bubo:-
This
is nineteen ahead of where I was this time last year.
17.64
miles 908 feet elevation up and down
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