Guided Bird Watching Cruise 11th January 2025

Shifting from cold and grey to pleasantly sunny conditions, today’s cruise showed us the estuary in contrasting moods and provided a classic ‘Exe’perience with some great views of an impressive range of birds. Among the highlights were several close Red-breasted Mergansers, two Great Northern Divers, a Kingfisher & lots of Avocets.

Meanwhile, a thousand-strong flock of Black-tailed Godwits along the water’s edge near Topham was an impressive sight as was a roost of 500 or so Golden Plover packed tightly together on the mudflat. There were lots of Brent Geese too, including one large gaggle that treated us to a close, noisy fly-over, whilst other notables came in the form of a Common Sandpiper at Topsham, a flock of about 40 Knot mixed in with the Godwits & a handful of Sanderling tripping along the strand line of Bull Hill. Birds aside, another top sighting was a superb Grey Seal hauled out on a pontoon, which, thanks to a careful approach by
Captain Jake, we succeeded in getting very close to the seal without troubling it at all. What a great-looking animal!

For those who are interested here are some bird counts made by Dave Smallshire on today’s
cruise (thanks for sharing these Dave). Curlew, Oystercatcher, Redshank and both Black-headed
and Herring Gulls were not counted.
2 Great Northern Divers
19 Great-crested Grebes
1 Little Grebe
50+ Cormorant
24+ Shag
11 Little Egret
3 Grey Heron
c530+ Brent Geese
80 Shelduck
80 Pintail
50 Teal
11 Red-breasted Mergansers
c488 Avocet
130 Lapwing
500+ Golden Plover
13+ Grey Plover
c40 Knot
c570 Dunlin
17 Sanderling
1000+ Black-tailed Godwit
15+ Bar-tailed Godwit
5 Greenshank
21 Turnstone
c10 Snipe
1 Common Sandpiper
c20 Common Gull
11+ Great Black-backed Gull
2 Grey Seals
 

Andy Smith