Our last outing of October was on a beautiful morning to the Stantyway Farm area of Otterton with a forecast of gusty winds and rather cool temperatures. We had neither. Was it the lull before the storm?

We started off down the Hill looking into farmyards, over gates and scouring hedge tops with the foremost thought in our minds of looking for Cirl Buntings, an RSPB success story for the area. The first birds some of us saw were a couple of Pied Wagtails whilst the others saw a Great Spotted Woodpecker fly off down the lane. We heard many birds chirping away but couldn’t see many.

We possibly did see a Cirl and we possibly saw a Spotted Flycatcher. We also saw quite a few flocks of possibly Linnets: they were doing much swirling and turning and being very Linnet-like in their behaviour but we really didn’t get a very good close up until later on on the coastal path when one popped out with the ‘possible‘ Cirl Bunting.

Now, still on the coast path but looking down onto the beach, we could see Great Black-backed Gulls and on the sea stacks many Cormorants hanging out their wings to dry.

We finished our lovely autumnal walk in the sunshine with an approximate list of 25.

Janet Fernley

Unfortunately no bird photos at all, just a nice view of some cliffs. If you look very closely at the small stack (Little Picket?) to the centre right you might see lots of Cormorants.