Acres Down, Bolderwood and Pennington Marshes - Thu 3 Jun

I had booked a couple of days off work for the tail end of this week in the hope of spending a bit of time with Ellie, however, she had to work today so I offered to drive her down to Lymington in Hampshire where she works. We set off early and it was only just gone 8.00am when I dropped her off so I decided to drive up to up in to the New Forest and visit Acres Down, just outside Lyndhurst. I walked from the car park around to the hill and set up my 'scope and started scanning the area, a couple of other birders soon joined me. Before long I had seen at least three Goshawks, including a fairly close female bird. A couple of Cuckoos were singing and one bird perched in a tree in front of me. Things got steadily better as a pair of Siskins flew over and then I spotted a Hawfinch as it flew past. Several Tree Pipits were singing, and then the highlight of the morning, a smashing and extremely obliging, Honey Buzzard. With all the target birds ticked off I returned to the car and then (after being tipped off by another birder) took a short walk in to the woods where I managed to get a good view of a singing Wood Warbler.
I then left Acres Down and drove the short distance to the Bolderwood Ornamental Drive and parked up in one of the car parks. A spent a couple of hours wandering around the woodland during which time I saw a few Redstarts flitting around, including a couple of singing males and some female birds with food. I could hear more than I could see due to the lush woodland vegetation but a pair of Marsh Tits showed well as they fed in the canopy. Another Tree Pipit was singing in a clearing and I was treated to an extremely close view of a newly fledged Nuthatch as it preened itself not far from a parent bird.
As it was now 12.30pm I drove back to Lymington and had lunch with Ellie before spending the afternoon walking around Pennington Marshes. Although there were plenty of birds about there was not a lot of variety but I did pick up my first (UK) Common Terns of the year and a few Little Terns were also about. Resting on a spit were a couple of male Eiders, an unexpected surprise, and I later saw another five. Waders were thin on the ground but I did see a magnificent summer-plumaged Grey Plover. Before I realised it I had to head back to pick up Ellie after a cracking day of birding.
UK list for 2010 now at 196 species.