Ice at Bowling Green Marsh

Before we moved to Exmouth, Bowling Green Marsh in Topsham was my favourite birding destination during a weekend visit. I've been neglecting it since we moved here in November, having only visited a few times, twice last year & once this to be precise. It is a great place, so this afternoon I decided to pop over there for a couple of hours.

I went for high tide, but unfortunately it wasn't a very high high tide, so the estuary mud was still exposed & the pond was relatively quiet. That is apart from the flock of about 500 Wigeon, 80 Teal, 20 Shoveller, 4 Tufted Ducks, 2 sleeping Pintails and 1 lonely looking Canada goose! A lot of the water was frozen so they were concentrated in a few channels & on the grass. It was practically empty of waders with just 1 Lapwing & 1 limping Avocet. I guess that the soft estuary mud was preferable to the frozen ground. There was a fox by the fence under the railway line scratching & yawning, probably deciding on the menu for tea.



The hide



view from the hide


















I then walked down the road to the platform which gives a great view of the estuary. There were hundreds of Avocets, a few fairly close but most spread out over the estuary mud, along with quite a few Grey Plover, Curlew, Redshank, Dunlin  & 1 Bar-tailed Godwit.

Path to the estuary viewpoint

 

The estuary from the platform



 



Looking South along the estuary from the Goat Walk



Next stop was the Goat Walk, a pedestrian walkway that runs along the edge of the estuary to Topsham village. The sun was low & quite bright which was nice for getting warm, but didn't help with birding as a lot of the birds were in silhouette. At least I managed to add Black-tailed Godwit to the list as there were a group of  8  feeding at the edge of the water. 

A quick visit to the quay, where there was a nice view but unfortunately no new birds, then headed home to defrost. It was a shame that I didn't get any new birds for my Year List, 2 would have been nice on the 2nd day of the 2nd month of the second year of the decade in the 2nd millenium.



Looking North from Topsham Quay