Wednesday 8 June 2016

Recent Sightings

It’s June and there is an abundance of wildlife everywhere you look, so today I am sharing all the best things I’ve seen around the area lately.
Whilst thing have gone a little quieter lately, the most obvious species on our housing estate a few weeks ago was the starling. If you walked down the street you could hear the sound of starling chicks squawking for food from virtually every house, including our own. They seem to like to nest under the roof tiles in the cavity. Now many young starlings have fledged and can be seen trying to eat food off the feeder, although many still don’t seem to have got the hang of it.
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There are lots of Canada Geese around the nearby fishing lake and for many years they seem to have set up a sort of goose nursery in a local field. At this time of year you can guarantee to see lots of gosling on the field.
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Canada geese are quite interesting in that the way the raise their chicks is different to other birds. Their hatchlings are precocial, which means they are well-developed and can feed themselves almost straight away. They just need their parents to keep them safe and show them where the food is. They lay around six eggs in a clutch but actually many geese don’t do much parenting- they led their young goslings to a nursery area and let other geese look after them. On the local field there are around 25 goslings but only four adult geese.
Other birds are beginning to fledge now, although frankly I haven’t seen many young birds yet. The weather this week is looking to be a little better so I expect that many will fledge now. I spotted some blue tits nesting in this crevice in an oak tree and from what I could glimpse they looked like well established chicks that will fledge soon.
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One final bird for today is this beautiful Little Egret with some black-headed gulls. I’ve passed this spot on the river Avon a few times recently and the egret has always been there. I have only seen the one so it’s unclear if there’s breeding going on. The egret is not keen on the gulls and chases them off if they come too close.
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I’ve been out and about in the New Forest a lot this week and seen plenty of interest. There are deer everywhere in the New Forest at the moment- it’s almost harder to avoid seeing them than it is to see them! I finally managed to get an OK photo of a roe deer doe too:
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You can see a lapwing in the centre of photo below, taken at Ibsley Common. You might think of lapwings usually living on farmland but clearly this emerging heathland is just as good. I was also lucky enough to see peregrine falcons passing food in the air whilst I was up on the common too. I suspect they may well have a nest in a small wood up there.
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Another New Forest spot was this beautiful slow worm which was basking on a path. Despite their name and appearance slow worms are neither a worm nor a snake but actually legless lizards.
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I shall finish today’s post with some of the lovely views I’ve seen recently:

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