UK Wildlife Blog

The weather for a lot of the trip was overcast, which was what it was like when I started photographing the resident pied wagtail family, this juvenile was preening not far away from me

But as I was photographing the sun broke through and I got loads of photos of the juveniles


And the adults

The other residents were the ponies, strangly more shetland ponies than new forest ponies, but lovely all the sameI have a soft spot for these guys. mInd yopu if you evr stay at Ashurst, look out for the white shetland - I twice saw it raid picnics/BBQs/tents!

Some of the walks around the paths near campsite were fruitful. On one walk we glimpse one roe deer before carfully inching towards another. Unfortunately as we started to get close a family turned up on bikes. The deer tolerated the kid shouting "LOOK A DEER!" which is something I can forgive him for doing, I probably would have done the same at his age! The most dissapointing bit was when the owner failed to stop their little rodent dog and it chased after the poor deer. The family then rode on pretending (badly) that they hadn't seen us a few metres away It just illustrates the problems with dogs in the New Forest.

On another, better, dog free walk we spotted buzzard flying between the trees and this lovely common frog