Spoonies

A quick visit to Topsham today in the 'sunny spells' or rather the rainy spells!

Birds of note were two juvenile Spoonbills straight out from the hide at Bowling Green Marsh.

It was low tide, so the waders were out on the estuary mud, but two Marsh Harriers (1m, 1f) made a brief visit, panicking the ducks and geese.

There were two Lesser Black-Backed Gulls on the marsh.

Lots of Shoveler on the marsh, very noisy at times in their pre-breeding display.

I picked out about 6 Snipe, including this bird that was washing.

The Avocet flock was distributed over a wide area and birds were scythe feeding in the liquid mud.

The Golden Plover flock (300+) was between the Goat Walk and the Turf House Hotel.

Thousands of other waders were spread over a wide area, and numbers were difficult to estimate, but Curlew, Grey Plover, Dunlin, Lapwing and large numbers of Redshank were seen.