Saturday 14th Feb
Back home to London for the weekend had a arranged a day trip to Norfolk with me mate when we looked at the weather decided to cancel. So instead on Saturday 14th me and my mate and and another good friend headed south first stop not far from where I am staying in Chichester. We headed for west witterings to see if we could see the Red Breasted Goose on the way down it came on the pager that the goose was in the harbour just north of East Head we decided to park at the church and not the car park (as I know this site quite well it turned out to be a good move) we walked through the church yard and then across the caravan park to the road we then turned right and then onto the harbour as we were crossing the green towards the harbour edge my mate picked up on a lone goose flying across from the right and said that’s it and we had good views of the Red Breasted Goose flying around it did a circuit and landed back with the Brent geese that it had been with (Now that is what you call luck being on your side) We then had a look at Snowhill mash where my mate found a jack snipe in with the common snipe other birds seen in this area, Redshank, Black Headed Gull, Curlew, Oystercatcher, Dunlin, Ringed Plover. Our next stop was Dell Quay where we had Little Egret, Red Breasted Merganser, Kingfisher, Grey Plover, Lots of Dunlin. Redshank, Black Tailed Godwit, Grey Plover. We then decide as time was on our side we would have a look at thr great deeps on Thorney Island we walked out to the deeps and had Little grebe, Great crested Grebe, Brent Geese, Golden Plover, on arriving at the deeps the water level was high but we did find 8 Greenshank, wigeon, Pintail Duck, Common Buzzard, and on the way back Yellow Hammer, there where also lots of Skylarks.
We are now on a bit of a twitching mood we had other sites we wanted to visit So our next stop was Beaulieu Road Station in the New Forest. Here we where looking for the Great Grey Shrike we walked down to denny wood but we where spread out after a while I spotted the Shrike flying across only one of the other in the party got on it this was the only sighting I had I also had a lone woodlark.
Our next stop was to Black water Arboretum to see if we could find Hawfinch this is a new site for us we arrived at about 10 past 2 we wandered down to the arboretum and spoke to a locale who told us the best place to wait then at ¼ past 3 the first birds started to arrive we ended up with 8 Hawfinches in the tops of the trees and some very good views of the birds. We also had info on another site in this area for a Lesser Spotted Woodpecker but did not have time to have a look as one of the party needed to be back in London by 6 o’clock, we did a quick walk around the arboretum where we found Treecreeper so it was back on the motorway London Bound
But all in All a very nice day bird watching and a few new sites to our list
Sunday 15th Feb
Today me and my sisters and one of the sisters god child headed of to the area around Christmas Common in Oxfordshire to see if we could see any Red Kites as we travelled along the M40 we had 15 Kites by the time we turned of at junction 6 we then headed for a site that I know to see if we could locate any Willow Tits after a short walk we found a Willow Tit then as we returned to the car I heard another one calling after a short time I located it by now we have had 40+ Kites some just over our heads and one sitting on a post as we parked up but as another car went by the Kite took off. We then had a look at some other sites that I know in the area and by the time we left we had 60+ Red Kites plus 4 Common Buzzards, Sparrowhawk & Kestrel, We Also had some Redwing sitting on top of a bush,
Quite a nice day out
