Guided Bird Watching Cruise – 5th December 2025

After two rather pleasant, sunny days, today came as a shock. Rain became very heavy during the afternoon and the SSE wind increased to gale force: awful conditions for trying to find and watch birds! This was doubly-annoying, because some of the people on board were hoping for views of the Lesser Crested Tern that had been seen from the Pride of Exmouth on the previous two days.  Unfortunately, we only saw a distant shape on the mud off Dawlish Warren, with its head facing into the gale, away from us. Thank goodness the Pride of Exmouth has a cosy lower deck with ample supplies of pasties, mince pies and hot drinks!

Finding birds was a struggle, as the visibility was bad and horizontal rain pelted onto binoculars.  Around the mudflats favoured by the tern, were large numbers of Brent Geese, but it wasn’t until we reached the River Kenn outlet at Powderham that we got some acceptable views of birds, including a Greenshank. As the river channel narrows towards Turf, small flocks of Pintail took off and a little further on there was a huge flock of Black-tailed Godwits. Then we encountered a good number of Avocets feeding first on the mud near the end of the Ship Canal and later in the shallow water.

A group of Red-breasted Mergansers gave a lovely flypast at Topsham, where the mudflats held many Dunlin and yet more Avocets and Godwits. However, the strangest sight was a pair of Black Swans that walked across the mud leaving conspicuous trails of footprints. Even more odd was the angle at which had to stand into the wind to avoid being blown over! Some of the Black-tailed Godwits were also having to lean forwards at a precarious angle – no bird wants to have its rear end facing a strong wind, as their feathers would be irreparably damaged.

Well, this cruise was quite an experience – one that perhaps no one would like to repeat! But it’s part of the wilder weather we must put up with occasionally, and the birds also of course. Indeed, it’s quite likely that the mild but strong southerly winds of late have brought the Lesser Crested Tern up from its usual haunts in NW Africa.

A little bit of history about the Lesser Crested Tern in Britain.  There were reports of what was probably the same bird every year between the first British record in 1982 and 1998, including a sighting at Dawlish Warren from 17 to 20th July 1985. Remarkably, this bird, fondly known as ‘Elsie’ (after its initials, LC), settled in a colony of Sandwich Terns at the Farne Islands in Northumberland, eventually rearing one hybrid young in 1989. Since then there has been only one record, in Norfolk and Suffolk in 2005, so this 2025 bird has been warmly welcomed by many twitchers. It survived the storm and next day was even seen sitting on a pontoon at Turf, so maybe it will stay around longer.

Dave Smallshire