Exe Estuary and beyond, 27/11/2010

Braving the arctic weather and a scary forecast for heavy snow, we headed for the Exe Estuary reserves at Topsham and Exminster. I briefly lived in the area as a child, but had never visited either reserve as far as I know so it was nice to finally put that right!

Although the hills and fields most of the way down were white with snow, as we neared Exeter it gave way to greenery and whilst it was cold, it wasn't anywhere like as bad as I'd feared it might be. There was also no sign of snow on the way either so I decided we'd made a good decision to go!

We stopped first on the east side of the estuary at Bowling Green Marshes near Topsham, hoping for avocets. Initially, we made for the hide along the road. Lots of robins, dunnocks, pied wagtails, goldfinches and redwings in the hedges and on the road. In front of the hide was a great mass of ducks and waders, virtually all wigeon, teal and black-tailed godwits on first impressions. However, after a few minutes careful watching we were able to pick out shovelers and snipes amongst them I ddin't know snipe could swim, incidentally, but the ones here appeared to! There was a buzzard in the background, which perched briefly and then began soaring again, and a little egret. No avocets, though.

After a while in the hide, we headed further along the reserve to the short trail that heads to a viewing platform. Not expecting a great deal, we had a mystery little bird showing lots of white as it flew off into the hedge (absolutely no idea, probably a chaffinch!), and then got to the platform. Wow! Absolutely hundreds of avocets, godwits, dunlin and a sprinkling of curlews amongst them feeding on the mud where the Rivers Clyst joins the Exe. The pic in my album gives an indication of the spectacle, although thats pic shows approx 1/5 of the birds on the mud!

We then tramped through the mud on the rest of the trail and saw nothing, before returning to the road. More dunnocks and redwings!

We then got back in the car and drove to Labrador Bay, a newish RSPB reserve created to protect cirl buntings. It was bitterly cold on the exposed slopes, but our trip was worth it was we saw at least one, and probably two cirl buntings as well as a small flock of little finches flitting about on the stubble. One particularly cirl bunting was kind enough to pose as we reeled off hundreds of pics (the best is in the album!) and edged closer in the hope of a definite identification! It was too cold to linger, so having got we wanted, we head back up the coast to the west side of the Exe Estuary reserve.

Whilst driving, we passed a flock of Brent Geese feeding in a field in Dawlish. Arriving at the reserve, we took a walk down the tow path of the Exeter Ship Canal to Turf Lock. It was getting gloomy by now, and we saw mainly redwings in the hedges and some mystery finches which I couldn't get a good enough look at to id. In the marshes itself, there were swans and canada geese but we didn't see a great deal on the marshes. The canal had moorhens and coots and a warbler flitting about which I think might have been a Cetti's based on the time of year and its colouring, looked like a reed warbler but they surely should have gone home by now? Unfortunately, the little thing wouldn't stay still or make any noise so I'm left to wonder. It was definitely bigger than a wren, though. The walk was redeemed by a redshank, more godwits and dunlin feeding at the end, and we saw a kingfisher (in bad light, it looked almost dark!) which was lovely. On the walk back, we could see the flock of Brent geese on the wing in the distance, and were treated to a fly past! Much better than the red arrows, in my opinion.

The final bird of the day crossed the track in front of us when we were back in the car; I'm not saying it definitely was a water rail, but it was a very thin moorhen if it wasn't! I'm not counting it, as it was too gloomy to make any detail out, so water rails continue to frustrate me for the time being!

A good day, though, and not a bad tally for a few hours which made the long drive home worth it.

As a postcript, I'd read that there were some purple sandpipers present at Portishead; not a bird I'm very familar with, and certainly not one I've seen before. I'm not familiar with Portishead either (prefer the music to the place) and so while I had a good idea where they were, I had no idea how easy they'd be to see so on Sunday we went and had a look. Turns out, it couldn't have been easier as the pictures in the album will testify. After a few minutes watching them, my hands had turned blue with the cold so I took that as a sign to curtail my weekend's birding early (and go home to watch the football instead!