Saturday 16 February 2013

16th February, 2013 New Forest and Amberley

A fine calm day was forecast so we decided to try for Goshawks displaying in the New Forest. After a visit to Bishops Dyke where a Woodlark was singing briefly we moved onto our first site and David soon located a Goshawk sat high up in a tree. After a wait for some 20 minutes it took flight and then went into display mode for at least half an hour attracting 3 other birds to join it. Simply superb. Once these had disappeared, we then decided to try our second site near Fritham and here we had some good views of a further 3 birds displaying and at one time all three birds were together in our scopes. We also had nice views of 2 Hawfinches sat out in the open.
On our way back we briefly stopped off at the viewpoint overlooking Amberley Wildbrooks and this produced a single Barn Owl and 11 Ruff.



Two of the seven Goshawks seen today.


Hawfinch in the New Forest