New Forest Raptor Monitoring Programme - Autumn 2025 update

New Forest Raptor Monitoring Group (NFRMG) 21 August 2025

With June and July now behind us the raptor monitoring season fast draws to a close. We have completed the Goshawk monitoring for this year, and the results are along the lines we predicted, but are not unprecedented.

On the Crown Lands, we had 41 sites where Goshawk breeding attempts were confirmed, of which 31 were successful. An additional eight sites were occupied but where only a single bird was presumed to be present. A total of 12 further sites that have held birds previously were checked, but no signs of occupation were noted, or more work was needed to prove presence or absence.  

28 sites were climbed and produced 61 young, of which 59 were ringed with both BTO and colour rings (29 male and 30 female). Only one pair managed to raise four chicks, with nine pairs raising three each, 11 pairs rearing two each, and eight pairs only rearing a single chick. Three further sites fledged a minimum of four young, totalling 64 young from the 31 successful nests.

A nice 'even-aged' Goshawk brood of three chicks  

For the last couple of weeks of June and the first few days of July we have been checking Common Buzzard sites, but as with Goshawk several breeding attempts appear to have been abandoned. Further reports from fieldworkers in other areas support a similar trend. Young Buzzards call noisily when recently fledged, so it is still possible for us to find further new sites for a week or two, but currently we have 19 successful sites from 30 checked.

Despite the good weather and early arrival of Honey Buzzards from spring migration, sightings and records have been scarce. No new sites have been reported, and numbers are low but on a par with 2024. This species is one where our work takes us beyond the New Forest and even Hampshire as part of a contribution to a national colour-ringing project. Sightings during incubation are so infrequent that it is not usually best use of our time to look for these during the month of June, but we did little else during July.

A pair of young Honey Buzzard chicks

A different pair of young Honey Buzzard chicks

A growing pair of Honey Buzzard chicks

A mature Honey Buzzard chick

A double highlight of this season’s fieldwork came on 26 July and 01 Aug when camera footage revealed the discovery of two new colour-ringed Honey Buzzards in our breeding population. A male bearing the colour ring ‘NM’ was ringed by us as a nestling in 2018 at a site near Dorchester, 24 miles from its current breeding site. Another male bearing the colour ring ‘LH’ was ringed as a nestling in 2014 near Dorking, Surrey, over 80 miles away from its current breeding site. And hot-off-the press is a photographic record of a probable breeding male in northeast Kent carrying the ring ‘MZ’, which our records show is a New Forest bird ringed by us as a nestling in 2016. This trio of records is a great contribution to the national project and demonstrates the value of colour-ringing, which has delivered over 40 sightings/records since it began - an amazing recovery rate for a ringing project with such a small sample size.

Colour-ringed male Honey Buzzard 'MZ' 

Close-up showing the colour ring on male Honey Buzzard 'MZ' 

Sightings of Red Kite in the New Forest seem a daily occurrence these days and although we’re not aware of any nests on Crown Lands we have them within the wider New Forest National Park boundary. Sparrowhawks remain elusive, and although no chicks were ringed, we did find four nests. We also watched two juvenile Peregrines on the wing from a New Forest nest during late June.

Finally, we were optimistic that Hobby may be present at a few more sites this year, and with three nests found during the morning of 27 June and another the following day we had a good start. Our sponsors, Hans and Kate, were with us when we climbed and ringed our first brood of Hobby chicks for many years and saw first-hand how feisty and belligerent the three small chicks were! We followed that a few days later with another brood of three chicks, thankfully a little less feisty!! Sadly, things went downhill after that and four other sites that held breeding birds appeared to have lost their young to predation (as deduced from observations overlooking breeding sites, although we have not climbed them to confirm). We have noted activity at a few other sites and will follow these up in the next couple of weeks. Hobby are noisy and brave in defence of their young, but this also attracts avian predators much larger than themselves such as Buzzard and Goshawk. The chicks are very exposed in open nests on the top of trees and often easily visible to avian predators flying over.

A trio of Hobby chicks

A different trio of Hobby chicks 

Finally, local wildlife film maker, Matt Roseveare (sponsored by the New Forest Biodiversity Forum), has gathered some nice footage of the work we completed this spring and summer, and it will be interesting to see how he puts it all together.

The New Forest Raptor Monitoring Programme forms part of the New Forest Biodiversity Forum and is sponsored by Kairos Philanthropy Fund and delivered in partnership with Forestry England.