Wolves Wild

A row of seafront properties at Exmouth, probably small hotels or b & bs. I was struck by the range of colours they were painted in.

Brent geese spend the summer, their breeding season, in Siberia. Come winter, they head for places with a milder climate. Large numbers end in the Exe estuary. By the new year they have finished off their preferred food: eel grass. They switch to the grasses of the Exminster marshes, crowding there at high tide and gathering in numbers on sandbanks exposed by the ebbing tide.

I noticed this distinctive boat on occasional visits to the hide at Dawlish Warren over they years, and vaguely wondered what it was for. A different viewpoint – from the water, on one of the birdwatching cruises on the Stuart Line boat – finally provided the answer. Fishing for mussels. It’s a floating vacuum cleaner.

A merganser drake swimming in the Exe estuary off Dawlish Warren. Now you see him, now you don’t – he’s dived after a fish.

Starlings gathering on the mast of one of the yachts laid up for the winter in a riverside boatyard at Topsham.

Snowdrops flowering a month or so ago in the mild south Devon climate of Topsham.