Guided Bird Watching Cruise 14th March 2025

This was the last cruise of a successful season, with almost 30 Guided Birdwatching Cruise on the Exe, with over 3000 thousand people have been able to enjoy the winter wildlife spectacle with Stuart Line Cruises, and we thank all you passengers for coming with us, getting involved and valuing the birds on show.

Today’s weather was calm but cold, with outbreaks of sunshine highlighting the waders and wildfowl across the mud banks. Signs of spring included Shelduck, squabbling amongst themselves as their find a mate for breeding, Great Crested Grebes with their bright orange head plumes (see attached pictures by Dave Smallshire below) and a dozen Grey Heron nests high in the trees behind Starcross Sailing Club. In a few short weeks most of the wintering wildfowl will have departed north and east to their breeding grounds, but we were fortunate to see about a dozen European Wigeon feeding in shallow water at the Lympstone Commando training base, frantically putting on weight for their migration to Scandinavia. The last of the Brent Geese were scattered around the estuary in several loose flocks; we saw about two hundred, all bar one being the Dark-bellied Brent Geese that travel here from the Russian Siberian coast. The highlight of the day was a single Pale-bellied Brent Goose, a winter visitor from either Greenland, Svalbard / Spitsbergen. or Northern Canada; fortunately for us this lone bird chose to hang out with some Dark-bellied Geese and, side-on and in bright sunshine, gave a smart illustration of the plumage difference between the two sub-species.

As with other recent trips, the most of the wading birds on show were concentrated in the upper estuary near Topsham, where we saw mingled flocks of Black- and Bar-tailed Godwits, with several hundred Dunlin, a few Knot, Redshank, and the last of the wintering Avocets seen close alongside the boat. As we left Topsham, there was a shout-out for the wintering Long-billed Dowitcher, a visitor from the Barents Sea area, but your correspondent failed to see it in a tight flock of waders.

Today we were lucky to see a Harbour Seal, at first sitting on a mud-bank opposite Topsham, but later it appeared alongside the boat in one of the deeper channels.

As on yesterday’s cruise, on the return leg the higher tide enabled us to see over the railway line and into Powderham Park where there was the curious sight of at least fifty Little Egrets feeding in the short, heavily grazed deer park, sharing the turf with Fallow Deer and Common Pheasants; it seems odd for a fish eating heron to favour the parkland, and there were more Egrets in the park than feeding in the estuary.

As we headed back to Exmouth, a party of Oystercatchers was gathering for the high-tide roost on Dawlish Warren, where they could rest undisturbed while their estuary feeding grounds were covered. As one of the most charismatic waders on the lower Exe, this was a fitting bird to end both the cruise and the winter season.

Peter Hopkin (photos Derek Carter)