Jun 28 2011

New Forest Holiday Day 3 : Keyhaven: 28th June 2011

New Forest Holiday Day 3 : Keyhaven: 28th June  2011

On the afternoon of the third day of our New Forest Holiday we decided to head for the coast and go to Keyhaven near Lymington. We drove to the parking place at the end of Hurst Beach and then we walked the length of the causeway out to Hurst Castle.  As we walked past the mudflats at the start of the causeway there were several Mute Swans, Black-headed Gulls and Herring Gulls. As we walked along the causeway we also saw Great Black-backed Gulls, a Little Egret, Lapwing and Shelduck. As we neared the castle we started to see Skylarks rising from the scrub around the island.

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Jun 28 2011

New Forest Holiday Day 3 : Beaulieu Road / Shatterford Bottom : 28th June 2011

New Forest Holiday Day 3 : Beaulieu Road / Shatterford Bottom  : 28th June  2011

On the third day of our New Forest break we decided to return to Beaulieu Road / Shatterford Bottom  that we had reccied on our first day. Again it was a very hot day and instead of walking into Denny Wood we decided to do the whole circuit and turned right at the woods and came back round the other side of the heath to return to our starting point. The most frequent bird by far was the Stonechat. After an hour we were becoming quite casual about them as they seemed to be everywhere but the Dartford Warbler was again elusive despite this allegedly being one of the best places to see them.

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Jun 27 2011

New Forest Holiday Day 2 : Bucklers Hard and the Beaulieu River : 27th June 2011

New Forest Holiday Day 2 : Bucklers Hard and the Beaulieu River : 27th June  2011

For a change of location we decided to try a boat trip so we headed off for the “historic village” of Bucklers Hard, once a naval shipbuilding dockyard where many of Nelson’s ships, including some that fought at the Battle of Trafalgar, were built. We had a quick look at the museum but it was pretty hot so we went down to the water to take a boat trip down the River Beaulieu.

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Jun 27 2011

New Forest Holiday Day 2 : Acres Down and Bolderwood : 27th June 2011

New Forest Holiday Day 2 : Acres Down and Bolderwood  : 27th June  2011

Our guidebook “Where To Watch Birds in Britain” by Simon Harrap and Nigel Redman suggested that this was “probably the best site in the New Forest for Watching raptors” so we were looking forward to some exciting birding. We followed the rather good driving instructions in our guide book and parked just by the sign for the” cream teas” and then walked up through the woods and onto the ridge. Unfortunately all we managed to see were a few Blackbirds, a robin and some Chaffinches and a Tree Pipit.

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Jun 26 2011

New Forest Holiday Day 1 : Beaulieu Road / Shatterford Bottom : 26th June 2011

New Forest Holiday Day 1 : Beaulieu Road / Shatterford Bottom  : 26th June  2011

We arrived at East Boldre from Montacute by early afternoon. We were booked in at the Turfcutters Arms for three nights and this was to be our base for various outings into the New Forest. The room we had was a bit basic but it was close to everything and the pub was friendly enough. Our first outing was a brief recce of the Beaulieu Road / Shatterford Bottom area. We parked at the parking spot at Shatterford Bottom and walked the path to the left as far as Denny Wood which we made a brief venture into before returning. The habitat was typical for large areas of the New Forest being scrubby heathland with a few small shrubs and lots of gorse. It was very hot and this may have inclined the birds to keep their heads down because there was not a great deal on the heath. We did see two Grey Heron and Rooks and Starlings and even an Oystercatcher !

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Jun 26 2011

Journey from Montacute (Somerset) to East Boldre (Hampshire) : 26th June 2011

Journey from Montacute (Somerset) to East Boldre (Hampshire)  : 26th June  2011

We had met up with some of the guests and the hosts of the wedding we attended in Montacute on Friday again on the Saturday night and they suggested that we should  take a scenic route to the New Forest rather than the main roads and we followed recommendations by heading in Yeovil direction then going on to Sherborne and Shaftesbury then up through “the zig zag road”,  through Sixpenny Handley and onto  Cranborne Chase. From there we drove to Fordinbridge then down to East Boldre in the New Forest, Hampshire. It was quite a route and very scenic indeed. The zig zag road was more like the hairpin road but by the time we got to the top we stopped in a lay-by to relax for a bit. As we stood there taking in the view of the land below us, behind us Skylarks started to rise out of the wheat field singing and displaying.

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Jun 25 2011

Visit to Lodmore RSPB : 25th June 2011

Visit to Lodmore RSPB  : 25th June  2011

Just a short drive away along the A353 is the Lodmore RSPB reserve. We hadn’t been there before but a couple of people we met at Radipole Lake told us that it is often more productive than Radipole so we decided to go there. There is parking attached to Sea World which adjoins the site but we drove around to the other end of the site on Southdown Avenue which is a residential area with lots of free parking spaces. We parked just by the path that leads through the centre of the site then turned right at the end and walked all the way around to our starting point so we must have covered about three quarters of the site – perhaps a 2k walk. The weather was very hot which made it seem longer but it was well worth visiting for the colony of Common Terns.

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Jun 25 2011

Visit to Radipole Lake RSPB : 25th June 2011

Visit to Radipole Lake RSPB : 25th June  2011

Anne and I had spent the previous day attending the wedding of our friends’ daughter in Montacute in Somerset and this day we thought we should leave them all alone until meeting up again in the evening so we decided to drive down to the RSP sites at Radipole Lake and the nearby Lodmore reserve on the outskirts of Weymouth town in Dorset. We started off with a walk around the main reserve around the lake. The weather was fine and the highlights were good views of a Common Tern fishing, a Marsh Harrier over one of the lakes, Reed Bunting and Sedge Warbler. As usual for the time of year there were large numbers of Swallows and House Martins.

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Jun 23 2011

Visit to Slimbridge WWT : 23rd June 2011

Visit to Slimbridge WWT : 23rd June  2011

We were on our way to Montacute in Somerset for a wedding and we had stayed overnight at the Tudor Arms pub in Slimbridge village in order to break our journey up a bit and also to give us a chance to go to the Wildfowl and Wetland Trust centre there which we did in the morning. Unfortunately it was a bit wet and we did not have a huge amount of time so we concentrated on going to the hides. We seemed to forget the South Lake Observatory for some reason but we  did go to all the other hides and had a bit of a walk in the open part of the centre where the major attraction was (at a guess) around 100 Rooks making their Rookery in the trees surrounding the site but coming to the ground in a most confiding manner and happy to be within a couple of feet of the humans as long as it meant they could get at some of the duck food. We got some of the best views ever of Rooks at such close distance. Out at the Zeiss Hide we saw around a dozen Barnacle Geese among a lot of Crows in the fields and we could see a Buzzard overhead.

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Jun 22 2011

Visit to Arlingham and Slimbridge Village : 22nd June 2011

Visit to Arlingham and Slimbridge Village : 22nd June  2011

We were scheduled to attend a wedding on the 24th June at Montacute in Somerset so we decided to break up our journey by stopping off at Slimbridge in Gloucestershire. On our way there we took a bit of a detour to look at a restaurant,” The Old Passage” in Arlingham (also in Gloucester)This is situated on the edge of the River Severn in an oxbow of the river. We then drove from there along the Severn in the direction of Upper Framilode. We stopped for a while by a bend in the road to look at the birds on the edges of the estuary.  We were pleased to see what was for us the first colony of Sand Martins in a sandbank that were natural rather than man made. There were probably at least 40 Sand Martins flying around very near to us.

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