The Natural History group has outings or zoom meetings on the fourth Wednesday of each month except December. For outings we meet in the morning at the location of the field visit, details of which are emailed to members of the group about two weeks before the visit, and usually end with a meal at a local pub. Members are requested to advise the coordinator if they are coming on the trip. Visits may be postponed if bad weather is expected.

Previous meetings have included bird-watching field visits, looking at chalk downland, birdsong in the New Forest; and spotting butterflies at a Butterfly Conservation reserve.

Other visits planned for 2025 are:

March 26th	Blashford Lakes
April 23rd	New Forest, in particular the "Inclosure" known as Standing Hat
May 28th	Fishlake meadows
June 25th	John Lewis Nature trail. parking at the old golf club.
July 23rd	Pitt Down and West Wood (Farley Mount).
August 27th	Noar Hill chalk downland and chalk pits
September 24th	Langford Lakes
October 29th	Titchfield Haven
November 26th	Talk with slides Birds of Chile

U3A Natural History March outing

In beautiful weather we again visited Blashford lakes near Ringwood. The recent spell of cold nights meant that there were as yet no leaves on the trees which made spotting woodland birds easier and the clear light meant the lakes could be seen to be full of birdlife.

The lakes are old gravel pits carefully managed to attract a wide range of bird  species. 

There are excellent hides and on this occasion they were full of serious twitchers  with big lenses because a rare black necked grebe had arrived. We were lucky to watch this little black, long-necked chap dive and resurface as grebes do and added him to our list. The list at the end of the day totalled 40 species  of water and woodland birds which made the visit very worthwhile. Thank you Peter for your excellent record keeping.

We had an excellent and companiable lunch at the Alice Lisle Pub nearby and some of  us drove back across the New Forest which was looking wonderful under the blue sky.