New Years Birding

A new year and a new year list to start - although this year I am not going to chase a big list.

A muddy walk at Wembury on 4th January was my first days birding of 2015 but it was very quiet with a few gannets offshore and fulmars around The Mewstone being the highlights along with 2 turnstones on the rocks as the tide came in, a rare sight at Wembury these days.

Monday 5th and a walk at Slapton Ley and Beesands Ley was very pleasent in the sunshine but again it was quiet birdwise. The tide was low and the footpath between Torcross and Beesands was very muddy so we walked along the beach where a great northern diver showed very close to the beach as it dived for food. Beesands Ley had quite a few gadwall amongst the coot, tufted duck and pochard but there were fewer ducks on Slapton Ley at the Torcross end. The Cricketers Arms at Beesands was closed as was the Start Bay Inn and Seabreeze cafe at Torcross and with The Boathouse cafe still closed after the fire we ended up at the pub in nearby Churchstow for lunch.

A trip to Newquay airport to drop off the Outlaws on the 6th and a surprise sight was a red legged partridge in the road near the airport along with quite a few pheasents including a few squashed on the road. From the airport car park I could here regular gun shots so I guess the pheasents and partridge were released birds for shooting.

A male black redstart hovering around the palm trees near the sundial in Plymouth city centre on the 7th was a nice surprise, its red tail a flash of colour on a very grey day.

Thursday 8th and I played hide and seek with a recently reported yellow browed warbler near Blagdons Meadow by the River Plym - I lost with neither sight nor sound of it in the 90 minutes I spent quietly searching for it. I did see 2 ringed plover and a common sandpiper along the Plym while a song thrush belted out its song in the sunshine. A flyover peregrine while walking along Plymouth Hoe rounded off the day and brought my year list up to 59, not a bad start.

Christmas Birding

Christmas 2014 duly arrived and the weather turned dry and clear and cold which at least meant some nice walks to burn off all the excesses of the season.

Prior to Christmas an adult ring billed gull was found on the boating lake at Goodrington in Torbay and so I headed off to have a look for it on the 23rd but I was out of luck. I did however have a nice walk along the coast from Goodrington to Broadsands, my first ever visit there, and I managed some very nice views of an occassionally noisey yellow browed warbler (my 4th of the year) that has been showing well in bushes by the car park for a while.

 Male Tufted Duck, Goodrington

 Male Mallard, Goodrington

 Female Mallard, Goodrington

Mallards, Goodrington



A walk around Burrator drew a blank for reported crossbills and the best birds on a walk around Stoke Point were around 100 golden plover feeding in fields and flying around calling, having been displaced by the frosty weather.

And so my original plan for 2014 was to look for new birds and birds I have only seen once or twice but it went out of the window when the year started so well with an excellent day out at Brixham where I saw white billed, great northern and black throated divers, red necked grebe, purple sandpiper and black guillemot, and so I decided to try and see 200 birds in England in the year instead. And I finished the year on 213 - not bad at all - although that total does include a great skua that I saw from the ferry between Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly, a ruddy shelduck (at best feral, at worst an escape), and less than ideal views of Arctic skua, barn owl, ring necked duck, bearded tit, Temminck's stint (a life tick), Ross's gull, hoopoe (a UK tick) and tree sparrow. I also had brief but good views of a dusky warbler (another life tick) but all in all it has been an amazing birding year although it has been exhausting at times.

 Who knows what 2015 birding will bring?