Click here to watch the goshawks
BIRD lovers will be able to watch goshawk chicks hatch live on a webcam set up by the RSPB.
The charity has used cutting edge technology to show birds of prey as they breed, hatch eggs, feed chicks and teach their young how to fly.
The first birds to be featured are a pair of goshawks.
Their journey through the breeding season is being beamed live into the New Forest Reptile Centre, near Lyndhurst and broadcast online – including on the Dorset Echo website.
The goshawk female is incubating four eggs laid at the beginning of April. The chicks are likely to appear mid May.
Dan Parkinson, from the RSPB, said: “For the next five months we will be wowing people by giving them a privileged peek into this wild and inspiring world.”
From June, a pair of New Forest hobbies, which breed later in the season, will take their turn under the spotlight.
Watch the goshawks at dorsetecho.co.uk/news/nest_cams/
Only 500 breeding pairs of goshawks exist in Britain, including 12 pairs resident in the New Forest.
Goshawks became extinct as a breeding species in Britain at the end of the 1800s.
Most British goshawks do not move far from their breeding sites. Young birds disperse in all directions in late summer. Some northern populations move south in autumn.
Goshawks use cover to surprise prey and will make a rapid chase over a short distance before grabbing quarry with its talons.
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