Monday 9th and a grey and dank and windy day again but I headed off to Exmouth on the train to have a look for the reported serin. I left Plymouth after 9am to have a lie in and to get a cheaper train ticket (£10 return instead of £20 prior to 9am). While walking from the railway station in Exmouth to the football ground where the bird has been showing I bumped in to a birder called Dave who I see sometimes at Bowling Green Marsh and he pointed me in the right direction. A few birders were already assembled by the double decker bus by the football pitch where the serin was being regularly seen but there had been no sign of the bird - and after an hour and a half I had had enough and gave up. While waiting around I did see 8 redwings fly over and 2 peregrines soaring high overhead along with chaffinch, greenfinch, goldfinch and pied wagtails which helped to pass the time.
I walked back towards Exmouth along Mudbank Lane and had some nice views of brent geese and pintail feeding on the mudflats and eel grass beds along with wigeon, mallard, shelduck, oystercatchers, curlews and gulls including 2 adult common gulls and an adult lesser black backed gull.
Pintail, Brent Geese and Black Headed Gulls
Pintails
Brent Geese (Dark Bellied)
At the Imperial recreation ground a raven gave some very close views as it eyed me up, presumably waiting to see if I had any food it could scavenge from me.
Raven
Heading home and from the train between Exeter and Dawlish I saw a green sandpiper in a drainage channel near Countess Wear, black tailed godwits and greenshanks feeding on the mudflats and red breasted mergansers and 2 Slavonian grebes on the River Exe near Cockwood.
Hopefully my dipping streak will cease very soon!
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