ALthough the weather wasn’t great today, I decided to take the dog for a long walk.

I headed out to the Beaulieu River at Longwater Lawn near Ashurst in the New Forest, and was surprised to see no less than  3 Little Egrets.  I was rather surprised, as although I know that these are getting more common, I have never seen one this close to my parents home.  I managed to get a few shots of one in flight, but the light was terrible, and it was raining heavily, so its nothing special.

A bit later on, when I was walking alongside the railway line near Ashurst Lodge, I stumbled across two Woodlarks, which was a really nice surprise, as I hadn’t seen one of these for years.

I was determined to get mum to Slimbridge this week, as she had never seen a Kingfisher, and the reports on the Slimbridge web site indicated that the Kingfishers were very active clearing out the nest hole.

The weather was actually rather good with broken clouds and sunshine but occasional heavy wintery showers and a strong bitterly cold wind.

Firstly, I managed to get my Country Innovation coat and a new pair of Opticron Discovery binoculars, then we set off for the Kingfisher hide.

We’d only been there for about 20 minutes when the female Kingfisher showed up, and did a nice show of fishing.  We waited around for a bit, and she showed up again, so I was well pleased, as mum had never seen a kingfisher before.

We went for Lunch, then moved down to the feeders, where we got great views of a water rail, and that was the other thing I wanted to see.  There was a distant Peregrine seen from the Holden Tower, then the weather closed in, and we made a move.

My best shot of the Kingfisher is below (after a massive crop).

Yet again, the weather forecast for today wasn’t great, but mum and myself decided to take a chance and visit the WWT reserve at Arundel, and were pleasantly surprised.

We were hoping to see a Kingfisher, but unfortunately this wasn’t to be, though we were lucky enough to see Water Voles, aPeregrine, and the frequently heard, but seldom seen Cetti’s Warbler.

I got some good images of the captive wildfowl, but my favourite image of the day is below, and was taken by lying on my stomach and using a 17mm lens .

Well, my week off before my birthday got to a great start with some really shitty weather, which laid waste to all of my plans, but things brightened up today, so I took a chance and went over to the Hawk Conservancy to try and get some pictures.

The day started off promising, but by lunchtime, the drizzle had started :o(

There was a lot of building work going on, and unfortunately one of the Bald Eagles (Danebury) took offence at this and decided to disappear off, and this, combined with the fact the the weather was miserable, I decided against waiting until 16:30 for the kite and heron feed.

The light was poor all day, and so my flight shots aren’t up to anything much, but I did manage to get some nice portrait shots.