New Forest Frolics: Orchids & Buzzards

This is traditionally a quiet time of year, one that birders often fill by turning to other things to while away the time until autumn migration kicks off. Over the years in the summer months I have dabbled in butterflies, odonata, and flowers, in particular orchids. Whilst I've basically done butterflies and odonata (apart from the Scottish specialities of the latter) I've more or less given up on flowers (though I will take note of flora of interest en passant). However, I am still working my way through all the UK orchids. Not that I am a total "orchid head" like some enthusiasts but nevertheless it's a nice excuse to get out and see things during the summer months. This year I was determined to go and see the Late Spider Orchids in Kent but somehow that never happened. To make amends I've been on a couple of recent trips to mop up two orchid species that it is possible to see in the south of the country, namely Heath Fragrant Orchid and Bog Orchid.

The first trip was a few weeks ago. With the rest of my family all off doing things of their own, I decided on a day out myself and settled on Boundway Hill in the southern part of the New Forest just west of Sway where I'd been told I could find Heath Fragrant Orchids. The two hour journey was uneventful and despite my concerns, the orchids turned out to be very easy to find as there was an obvious boggy area down the hill within a hundred yards of the car park. The vast majority were Heath Spotted Orchids with perhaps a couple of dozen Heath Fragrants dotted in amongst them.

Heath Fragrant Orchids

One of many Heath Spotted Orchids

There were also lots of interesting bog plants including Bog Pimpernel, Bog Asphodel and two species of Sundew.

Bog Asphodel

Bog Pimpernel

Great Sundew

Round-leaved Sundew

In one small copse were some rather unusual orchids which to my inexpert eye looked like hybrid HF x HSO.

 

Heath Fragrant x Heath Spotted Orchid

I'd met IE and his son at the car park just as they were leaving and they'd reported lots of other orchid species but all I could find was a single candidate Common Spotted Orchid. I whiled away a pleasant hour and a half browsing all the orchids in the warm sunshine. Then it was back to the Gnome-mobile and back home.

The second trip was last week to catch up with one of the hardest orchids to see: the diminutive Bog Orchid. These tiny plants are notoriously difficult to find even when you know that you are in the right bog so when IE told me that he has a really good site for them I jumped at the chance. The extremely hot weather was going to be back to more reasonable levels on Friday and with rain forecast for the weekend I decided to take that day off work and to head down to the New Forest once again. Despite it being the first day of the school holidays there was little traffic on the A34 and I had a good run down. I duly arrived at the bog in question and after a few minutes I'd found my first Bog Orchid. 

My first Bog Orchid!

A bit of further searching soon turned up a few more

Just so you get a sense of how small they are!

As I had something else lined up after the Bog Orchids I decided that three was plenty to have seen so rather than searching for more (IE had had 15 of them in total) I headed to my second destination which was a good Honey Buzzard site that I'd been told about (please don't ask me as I'm sworn to secrecy!).

I arrived to find a chap called GD already at the viewing point. This was most fortuitous as he was a veteran HB watcher and was able to distinguish my target from their commoner cousins at a great distance. He'd told me that things had been very quiet that morning. By the time I arrived at 11:45 am he'd only had one sighting at 9am with just a smattering of Commons since then. My arrival seemed to perk things up because after that we had lots of sightings, mostly Commons but with several very good flight views of Honeys along with a couple of bonus Goshawk views and a single Red Kite (more rare there than back home at Oxford). With a Restart and a Woodlark as additional bonus sightings it ended up being a most enjoyable session and it was in a contented frame of mind that I headed back home to Oxford.