Dawlish Warren, Saturday December 23rd 2017

With a wildlife feeding frenzy having occured off Dawlish Warren on Friday 22nd December while I was having a particularly shite day at work I decided I needed some recovery time and so headed out to have a look around the next day. I felt knackered and cranky and it was dark and murky and mizzly on leaving the house but the train journey went smoothly and by the time I arrived at The Warren it was clear and dry but cloudy.

I walked over to the sea wall for a scan to be met with a sea full of birds - great northern divers, razorbills, great crested grebes, red throated divers, shags, gannets and gulls everywhere! The birds were mobile and active, diving and flying around and resting on the sea and difficult to count but there must have been 300+ gannets and 90+ great crested grebes present and I counted 7 red throated divers together with more also being present.

Onwards to The Bight and along the way a male cirl bunting was singing in a tree and a pair of bullfinch were feeding in the bushes, the male looking particularly stunning in the bright sunshine which had burst out from behind the clouds and raised the temperature to a very spring like level.

Male Cirl Bunting

In The Bight the usual birds were roosting at high tide - redshank, curlew, oystercatcher, dunlin, turnstone, knot, grey plover, bar tailed godwit, wigeon, shelduck, brent goose, cormorant and gulls - while offshore at the estuary mouth were 3 great northern divers busily diving and bringing crabs up to the surface to munch on.

Brent Geese on The Golf Course

Back towards the main pond and a birding group had found a firecrest in the bushes which gave some brief views before flying off out of sight and on the main pond a pair of mallard, a pair of shoveler, a little grebe and a moorhen were found along with a Jack snipe in the same spot I saw one back in March this year, presumably the same returning bird and still extremely difficult to find amongst the reeds and easily overlooked.

Male Shoveler

 Dawlish Warren - Main Pond

 Jack Snipe in the Reeds

Jack Snipe - Zoomed In

Back to the sea wall and the birds had moved further out offshore but there was still plenty of birds to see including guillemots and a distant dark skua species which barrelled into a group of feeding gannets and which I annoyingly lost sight of as I switched from binoculars to telescope (both Arctic and pomarine were reported that morning). Common dolphins were also seen, a little distant but showing well at the surface as they slowly moved south, and I also had 2 brief views of a harbour porpoise.

Onwards to Dawlish along the coast path and while waiting for the train I scanned the sea from the railway platform and had some close and good views of both great northern- and red throated divers along with a few kittiwakes. More common dolphins were also seen, some quite close to the beach and all swimming around quite languidly.

The train journey home wasn't so great with delays and cancelled trains and I ended up waiting at Newton Abbot station for an hour and a half, if I had known I would have stayed longer at Dawlish but never mind, it had still been a lovely day out.