Category: David

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.

Reeds, with last year’s seeds, in reed beds by the Estuary of the River Exe and its tributary, the River Clyst.

The out of focus building in one of the pictures is the former lock-keeper’s cottage on the Exeter Canal at Topsham.

A lone starling looks out from the vantage of a chimney pot, while another small group prefer a lookout over water as well as land. Topsham, south Devon.