Mimosas are tropical trees. They can be grown outside in Britain in places with particularly mild winters. But even there they are vulnerable to untypical cold spells.
These trees can be seen while wandering the streets of Topsham. They looked very unhappy in the aftermath of the heavy snows of the “beast from the east”, which came in about this time of year a few years ago, but now look like they have fully recovered.
Turnstones get their name from their habit of turning over large pebbles in the inter-tidal zone in search of crabs and other invertebrates underneath. Low tide, off the Goatwalk at Topsham doesn’t have such loose stones. So this small group of turnstones (four or five altogether) were exploring clumps of seaweed, presumably in search of the same prey.
Hogweed plants flowering mid-February in Devon. One near the south coast of the county, at Topsham on the Exe estuary. The other on the north coast, at Ilfracombe.
Large numbers of Brent geese spend the winter on the Exe estuary, a temperate refuge from their breeding grounds in Siberia. They can be seen in their hundreds at high tide gathering in the marshes which run along the estuary, such as Exminster Marsh.
This smaller group had gone elsewhere, and were on rocks just off the beach at Exmouth, where some of them seemed to be eating the seaweed.
Shells at Exmouth, half-hidden in the grass on the stabilised sand dunes, on the landward side of the promenade road. The shells were too far from the sea to have been brought in by the tide. Dropped by the gulls which had eaten the mollusc insice.
We quite often visit the Exe estuary at the tail end of winter, and it seems that every time we do so, there dominant wader species is different.
This year, it was godwits which always seemed to be gathering on the exposed mud. Probably all black-tailed godwits, but we rarely got a good enough view for certainty.