A busy week, Monday was spent at the South West Deer rescue centre, images of the day in my Gallery pages and a Photo Blog to follow shortly.

After the wet weekend and the very wet day on the Monday I went to the Deer rescue centre the Thursday turned out beautiful and clear and relatively mild for the time of year. I couldn’t pass by the lovely view across to Corfe Castle as you climb the slope out of the car park.

As always on a visit to Arne we are never quite sure what we will see, we were hoping to see the Sika deer as they are now in the rutting season but there aren’t so many about now so it was a matter of luck. Our luck was in we headed towards Shipstal beach and spotted some deer on the marsh land, a Stag and several Hinds grazing. We stopped and watched them for a while and another Stag appeared from the woodland and started calling and some of the hinds followed him into the trees, we expected some sort of confrontation but none happened.

We moved on again and the Little Egret was fishing close to the deer in the bright sunshine.

We walked round  beyond the Shipstal ponds and spotted some hinds in the wood we waited for a while and sure enough along came a Stag we managed to get a photo before they all slipped into the woods. A couple of times we suddenly had a young Stag walk out in front of us I think he was a little confused of being out there on his own. We heard Stags calling as we walked around the woods, quite an eerie sound.

We had a look over the marsh from the Shipstal hide there were some distant deer but it was fairly quiet. A curlew was feeding in front of the hide and over towards Poole on a sandbank there were a number of birds Cormorants, Gulls, Shelduck and Spoonbill. Every time I have seen the Spoonbills they have been very static and I was beginning to think they were stuffed! The RSPB ranger assured me they weren’t and just as he told me that they flew up, he said there were 43 there at the moment, good number.

As we made our way back I noticed a lot of flying insects over the heathland, they were enjoying the sunshine also quite a few Hornets quite big and not something to annoy!

We had a lovely morning followed by a pot of tea in the cafe, thank you Judy for your company.

Back home my husband noticed what he thought were Swallows flying over the house, he wasn’t sure as it seemed particularly late for them still to be around, any way they did another flypast and we both identified them a Swallows. This unseasonal weather is messing with the wildlife, probably a late brood we can only hope they get to Africa safely.

Our Roe deer are still appearing in the field behind our house and still tolerant of people in their gardens, on the Friday I noticed there were now three, two does and a buck in the late afternoon sunshine.