Eyeworth

Before I write about Eyeworth I must remind myself of a few things that have happened over the
A scruffy looking Coal Tit - Eyeworth

last few days. The weather has turned quite dramatically, on Saturday it was dull, grey and mostly raining, turning the river from bright and clear to brown and turgid, and the sound from high pitched tinkling to low pitched glooping. The remaining snow left the ground, the Redwings left the cotoneaster berries and the Fieldfare left the apples.

On the previous afternoon my son and I saw a large raptor flying quite low over the house which I initially thought a buzzard, but on watching it, everything about its flight and shape was wrong. It was a flat grey sky and we could only see it as a silhouette, but the deliberate and powerful flap flap flap glide made it an almost certain Goshawk, which would be a first for me here.
Three evenings ago I heard my first tawny owl of the year hooting and again last night after the skies had cleared to leave a remarkably bright night. Several Robins have suddenly changed to their spring song, perhaps a little optimistically, but its nice to hear their cheeriness.






A pied Wagtail dances on ice















A trip out to Eyeworth in the New Forest on a sunny day is always a nice prospect. There has long been a population of Mandarins there and although decended from escapees of a wildfowl collection, these birds are now considered both wild and native. Whatever one's opinion of the rights and wrongs of this, the fact that this is a stunning duck is irrefutable, and the fact that Britain's feral/wild populations are of international importance due to the dwindling numbers in its original East Asian habitats make it a most welcome immigrant in my book, and one which appears to not upset any other species.
Eyeworth was surprisingly still largely frozen despite a temperature of 11C today, but it didn't stop the carpark being busier than I have ever seen it. Some people had come to throw bread for the ducks, some to throw seed for the birds, and some to just generally throw things.


A Marsh Tit ignores the busyness of the carpark





This didn't really make things condusive to nature watching but the Mandarins turned out briefly and with very uncertain footing to gobble up whatever offerings had been thrown onto the ice.



























Advance!














Run away!