May - Reptile Centre - Lyndhurst

Only nine turned up on this glorious warm sunny day. Although birds were hard to see amongst the canopy of the trees we enjoyed the walk visiting the Roman Bridge and we then followed the stream back. One curiosity is the number of black stones on the river bank. Mike Page gallantly went down the bank to fetch one.
John inadvertently disturbed a tree creeper from its nest in a rotten tree stump to reveal six well hidden eggs.
At the reptile centre there is monitor of the Goshawks nest live and another monitor showing highlights including the disposal of one dead hatchling to its remaining siblings.
Back at the centre we visited the reptiles including a very active sand Lizard.
Next month Friday 29th June unless changed will be at Lymington near the open swimming pool as before.

From Mike
An interesting morning where we were able to see the live filming of a Goshawk family at the nest, an exciting new venture for the centre that is proving very successful with many people making return visits to monitor the progress of the domestic life of these powerful raptors.

Not quite so successful was our identification of the owner of a small nest six feet up in a cavity in a very ancient beech stump. John saw the bird slip away and thought it looked 'orangey' . A perfect site for a Redstart I thought, but we heard no scolding notes from what is normally a noisy species - only persistent calling from a nearby Tree Creeper. Circumstantial evidence therefore pointed us towards this bird although I had never seen one using such an open-topped nest site. We continued our walk and had brief glimpses of Hawfinch again (we had two earlier over the Centre) and rather better views of Redstarts dropping down to feed under the beeches. Grey Wagtails and several groups of Beautiful Demoiselles danced along the stream edges in their individual ways.We heard a good many other birds too, including Tree Pipit, Wood Warbler and Firecrest but they were too distant or elusive to locate them.
After our group disbanded I sat by the stream to eat my 'nammit' but that nest-site was still niggling away at me and I returned to the tree, determined not to be stumped. I had the answer in barely five seconds as a Robin popped out. I left instantly and she was back on her eggs in less than half a minute. (John you were right about the colour) We live and learn!

Next meeting at Lymington Baths car park (summertime payment) 10am, 29 June 2007 when we hope to see some coastal birds again, Regards Mike.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------