The new generation

Spring is my favourite time of year - first all the migrant birds come back and sing, and then the new generation appears.
In my own garden, I have had two juvenile dunnocks, at least six baby house sparrows being fed by their parents and, since yesterday, three lovely and cheeky young starlings. They beg for food the whole time - they even tried to get a blackbird (also busy collecting food for fledgelings) to part with its food. A joy to watch!!

When I heard about two little grebe chicks that had successfully hatched not too far from here, I just had to go and see them. They are SO cute (so are adult little grebes!). I had also been after a shot of a little grebe riding on the adult's back for a long time - but obviously not an easy photo to get. Little grebes can be rather secretive and are very fast swimmers.

When we arrived at the site, the grebes were nowhere to be seen. No shortage of baby birds though!
There were two pairs of greylag geese with several goslings



Greylag geese



Mallard duckling

Also plenty of mallard ducklings, young moorhens and coots.

Coot feeding chicks

After a couple of hours I finally spotted the two little grebe chicks. Interestingly, no adults in sight but a black-headed gull that showed too much interest in the little ones...luckily, they managed to hide in the reeds and the gull flew off. Phew!

Here's a shot of the two grebe chicks, one doing a penguin impression.

Oh and I've also got an adult grebe for you doing a balloon impression! :)

Anyhow, a few minutes later, an adult grebe appeared with a big fish. No idea how the tiny chicks managed to swallow it!


Little grebe with fish (record shot!!)

The adult then swam off and returned with another, much smaller fish a bit later. And this time the chicks followed the adult and tried to climb up on their back (you can't tell whether this adult is actually a male or female). I think they are getting a bit too large now to be doing this but I was lucky - one did manage and I got a couple of shots. The light wasn't brilliant, either too dark or - when the sun came out - it was a bit harsh. Well always something wrong with 'the light' isn't there. ;)

Isn't this cute?? :)

What you think is the adult grebe's rump is actually the second chick's bottom - it didn't manage to climb up onto Mummy or Daddy's back!

So I'm really happy I got to see this special behaviour and got a couple of shots to look at and share with you as well.

New Forest

On Wednesday, we decided to spend the day birding in the New Forest. Quite a drive but we were hoping to finally connect with a Dartford warbler - the last one we saw was at Pagham Harbour last October. None on Ashdown Forest so far this year, which is a bit worrying - I hope they all survived the winter!

Our first stop was at Blashford Lakes. We saw a lovely female lapwing from Tern Hide and a wonderful, fluffy little grebe in breeding plumage, goldeneye and gadwall (no water pipit, snipe, sandmartin or ringed plover though!).

Female lapwing

Little grebe

We then moved on to the Woodland Hide where I was hoping to get a few more shots of brambling before they all fly off to their breeding grounds. After about 10 minutes a beautiful female appeared and I got some nice shots of her (much better than the poor record shot I got before!), followed by at least 4 lovely males, all coming into breeding plumage (one looked particularly smart).

Female brambling

Male brambling

We also had lovely views of a nuthatch, a coal tit collecting nesting material, a siskin, a lesser redpoll, a greenfinch, a wren and some blue tits.

We then tried 'Picket Post' heath but could not find any Dartford warblers. There were loads of meadow pipits, a raven and a fantastic buzzard circling right above us.

Buzzard

I also saw a common lizard enjoying the sunshine.

And of course there were some beautiful ponies! Being a horse person, I always love seeing them.


Young New Forest pony

So we drove around for another 20 minutes trying to find a certain site that we know is supposed to be good for Dartfords. Again we walked around for what felt like 50 miles but no Darties. More ponies of course, a mistle thrush, meadow pipits, skylarks and stonechats. Time to give up?

All of a sudden, on the way back to the car we thought we could hear the song we had been hoping for all day...and scanning the gorse nearby we saw him: a fantastic male Dartford warbler! Brilliant!

Male Dartford warbler

We also saw the female perched on top of the gorse behind the male.

Female Dartford warbler

Looking up, I noticed a bird of prey flying low over the heath. Wow, a beautiful male hen harrier - a lifer!

What a great day!