Weekend wanderings – part 2!

As promised earlier in the week, here’s what happened on day two of our Young Naturalists New Forest residential.

On Sunday morning we started bright and early, meeting Home Farm’s Education Officer Steve Barnard for an animal feed session. Steve took us on a tour of the farm, letting the group help out with some of the feeding tasks, collecting eggs and generally having the opportunity to ooh and ahh or gobble at every animal they came across…it was a definite highlight of the weekend!

We particularly enjoyed watching Lysander feed the ducks, which he had to get to via some sheep…he did a brilliant job…

After our fun feed session we thanked Steve for his time and went to meet Paul and Mandy Manning from Amews Falconry for an incredibly informative falconry demonstration. We began in the garden room with Paul introducing us to four different birds, an American red tailed hawk, a peregrine falcon, a kestrel and a European eagle owl. He gave the group a basic understanding of these different birds of prey along with their training and care.

We then headed outside for two tremendous flying displays from a Harris hawk and a Gyr falcon.

Paul with the Gyr falcon

Gyr falcon by Geoff Knott

Thank you Paul and Mandy for a fabulous morning!

We then headed over the Lepe Country Park for lunch followed by a wander through the nature reserve.  Whilst at Lepe we saw peacock, brimstone, red admiral, holly blue, orange tip and large white butterflies along with kestrel, swift, chaffinch, shelduck, godwit, redshank, grey heron, blue tit, Canada goose, little egret, oystercatcher, lapwing, black headed gull and ferel pigeon.

After an ice cream break we headed along the shore for a spot of beach combing before it was time to head back to Home Farm and head home.

Everyone had a really enjoyable weekend, adults included! We managed to find 52 species of bird, plus seven different types of butterfly, an extraordinary great diving beetle larvae on a mission and two different species of bat on our wanderings. We visited heathland, broadleaved woodland and the coast, well and truly exploring this lovely part of the forest.

Will’s favourite part of the weekend was hearing his first cuckoo while Lysander enjoyed beach combing at Lepe. Everyone else enjoyed the farm feed session and the falconry display whilst visiting Needs Ore and listening to churring nightjars were both firm favourites with the adults.

Which leaves me to say a huge thank you to volunteers Emily, Harry, Nigel and Geoff who gave up an entire weekend to spend time with the group, cooking one splendid dinner, two great breakfasts and preparing two lunches – we couldn’t have done the residential without you!!

Thanks too to the Countryside Education Trust for being such great hosts, Home Farm was a great place to stay and hopefully we’ll be able to visit again soon!

We’ve had a fab weekend, we’re just a tad sleepy…

Our Young Naturalists project is funded by the Cameron Bespolka Trust – empowering today’s youth through love for nature.