Wednesday 28th November 2012

The lovely sunlight allowed us to appreciate colours on the birds today, especially the glossy bottle green of Shags and the heads of drake Mallards and Red-breasted Mergansers.  On the other hand, looking towards the sun turns birds into silhouettes – so in some ways a cloudy day can be better!



Early on, a couple of Brent Geese on Pole Sand had the very pale flanks suggestive of Pale-bellied Brents. There are often a few on the estuary; they come from Greenland rather than Siberia, where our Dark-bellied birds originate. We had excellent views of a Slavonian Grebe close to the boat, one of two seen in recent days. There were also a few Great Crested Grebes and again large flocks of Brents and Wigeon, but only a few Pintails were visible today.



After floods have scoured the fine silt off the surface of the mud at the head of the estuary, the Avocets always move downriver to feed. Predictably, today they were mostly feeding between Powderham and Lympstone, while those at Topsham were resting. The latter gave us a good flying display though, together with hundreds of Redshanks, Bar-tailed Godwits, Dunlins and a few Knot. A small group of Golden Plovers asleep on the mud were nearly missed, as was the Spotted Redshank with Redshanks and 2 Greenshank at Powderham.



We glimpsed a Harbour Seal off Lympstone and had better sightings as we returned towards Exmouth, where one a (second?) was loitering off Bull Hill sandbank. Nearby, some Turnstones were scavenging on the shellfish processing vessel and there were even some feeding in the car park as we disembarked!



Dave Smallshire