The Birders February outing was to Budleigh Salterton and the Lower Otter Estuary with spotting the Spoonbills high on our agenda.

Our group gathered around after waiting a few minutes for the heavy drizzle to stop. The Met Office said no rain but BBC said 50% chance so they were the winners on this occasion.

I decided we would go around the top marsh as that was where I’d seen them before, (just two which had been there for a few weeks) so the safari began. There were plenty of water birds about but none too close and after scoping the area to see if those white blobs were Egrets or Spoonbills, and they were Egrets, so off we set.

We had progressed to the river and nothing spotted so far, apart from a Moorhen swimming a channel so we started up the footpath and hadn’t been going very long before coming towards us was a man with spotting scope. So a good subject to ask if he had spotted the Spoonbills and he readily gave us the exact location to where he had seen them. Spoonbills are not fidgety, nervous birds like the Goldcrest, they are usually seen with their heads down swishing their long spoons (bills) from side to side in the water feeding or having a rest with their bills tucked under their wings having 40 winks. I was now confident we would see them.

We continued on our way spotting many Teal, a few Redshanks, Black-headed gulls (now with the black head and not just the winter black spot), some Shelducks and a few Oystercatchers when we saw THEM, not far apart feeding. We stayed there looking either through our binoculars or getting a much better view from my scope for as long as we wanted. Then we moved on still able to keep the SB’s in site.

We put a step on - and saw a few more birds as we went such as a row of Egrets with a Heron amongst them keeping order - so we could get back to the car in time for lunch at The Kings Arms at Otterton.

Janet

And thanks to Martin for the pix.