New Forest Raptor Monitoring Programme - Spring 2025 update

New Forest Raptor Monitoring Group (NFRMG) 04 June 2025

Spring 2025 has been predominantly warm and dry and has enabled fieldwork to progress relatively unhindered. That said, the weather turned more unsettled just when we began our climbing and ringing!

The fieldwork year always starts with Goshawk, as this is the earliest of our raptors to begin breeding. With just over 60 nest sites to check, and a large programme of forest operations this spring, we have been busy finding and then monitoring nests, rescheduling forest operations, and then revisiting all sites to try and gauge the hatching dates for each nest for climbing and ringing.

With the Goshawk population on the New Forest Crown Lands now stable at around 45 breeding pairs, and a further handful where only a single bird has been holding territory, our early observations looked comparable with 2024, further confirming this population assumption (we have also looked at the number of breeding territories off the Crown Lands and estimate a minimum of 75 territories in the New Forest National Park.

We began ringing on 20 May, but it soon became evident that nesting was protracted and eventually spanned a period of five weeks. Productivity to date seems markedly lower than last year and failures appear higher too. To date we have only ringed 34 chicks against last year’s total of 97 chicks. We have several nests still to visit, so at this stage it’s uncertain what the final total will be.

Goshawk chicks ready for colour ringing (photo: NFRMG) 

Colour-ringed Goshawk chicks back in the nest (photo: NFRMG) 

Unfortunately, our plans to satellite tag some young Goshawk chicks this year have not been possible due to concerns from the BTO Special Methods team around the suitability of some of the tags on the market which were not conveyed to us early enough to look at alternatives. We do, however, continue to receive a trickle of reports supported by photographic evidence of some of last year’s colour ringed young birds, both within the New Forest and further afield in Hampshire.

In terms of other raptors, we are just resuming our Common Buzzard survey work, but already we are seeing similarities with the Goshawk and several breeding attempts appear to have been abandoned. Reports from fieldworkers in other areas show similar trends.

This spring has seen a real increase in reports of Red Kite in the New Forest and earlier in the spring we were excited to hear of birds displaying and carrying nest material close to the boundary of the Crown Lands. This optimism was dashed with the finding of two dead Red Kites in the same area in the following weeks (see pics below). The first was found by one of our NFRMG volunteers, and the other was found by a participant in the New Forest Volunteer Ecological Surveyor Programme (VESPA), highlighting the importance of having keen volunteers on the ground. Although the cause of death of both birds is unknown, bird flu is still present in the New Forest area and raptors are also still succumbing to trichomonosis caught from the prey species they eat.

Dead Red Kite found on 06 April 2025 (photo: Alex Yates/NFRMG)  

Dead Red Kite found on 30 May 2025 (photo: Colin Easton)  

Sparrowhawks continue to remain at lower population levels than they were prior to Goshawks returning to the New Forest, but we have more work to do on this species. We have reports of Peregrine breeding at two sites on the Crown Lands and Marsh Harriers are now making frequent hunting excursions onto the heaths from breeding sites around the coast adding to the predation pressure on our few remaining breeding Curlews and Lapwing.

The good weather saw the early arrival of Honey Buzzards from spring migration, but indications so far are that the local population remains at a low ebb. It has been nice to see that the colour ringed male Honey Buzzard (KJ) has returned for a sixth year and is hopefully going to breed again, having been ringed himself in the New Forest in 2015. Hobbies are present at a handful of sites but again are far lower than historically. It is very early days for both the above species, and we will provide further details in our end-of-season update.

Finally, we have helped deliver two training courses on breeding raptors for forestry workers and two educational experiences for young members of Hampshire Ornithological Society (HOS), as well as working with local wildlife film maker Matt Roseveare to put together a short visual piece on our work.

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.