Saturday 5th August 2023.
Today, with my family, we made the way to Ladies Mile Holiday Park at Dawlish Warren on the south coast of Devon. I have only ever been to Dawlish Warren once before, in 1997 to ‘twitch’ the Semipalmated Plover that summered there, but, to be honest, I can hardly remember anything about it apart from the fact there was hardly anybody there at the time. I did see the bird well, eventually and then took the 3 hour drive back home.
So, despite Storm Antoni raging through the UK, we made our way down there at a reasonable, comfortable speed; stopping only for refreshments and a nice break at Felicity’s Farm Shop just off the A35 west of Chideock. There, the ladies had found a Swallow nest with young on one of the buildings and despite it chucking it down with rain, I grabbed my camera and took a few photos of this delightful little scene (as briefly as I could).
The journey to the Holiday park was pretty straightforward (well, it is with Sat Nav! Doh!) and on our way there, I saw four species of raptor: a Hobby over the A31, a Peregrine just past the Farm Shop we were at, a male Sparrowhawk over the A35 and a male Kestrel also over the A35. Amazingly, not one Common Buzzard was seen on our journey down!
Earlier this week, I checked out the Dawlish Warren Latest Sightings website and was pleased to see some good seabirds had been passing through offshore including Pomarine Skuas, various Shearwaters and even Storm Petrels; hence, that's why I brought along my scope to hopefully catch up with these superb birds. After packing all our holiday stuff away, the ladies went off to the local Sainsburys to stock up the fridge and cupboards, while I took a walk down to the beach. There was still a very strong wind blowing (even blew my cap off!), but the walk to the beach was a lot longer than I expected. Just to make things even worse, my camera’s zoom lens had now stopped working! Disaster!!
I made my way through all the grim looking fairground atmosphere down near the seafront (all for the tourists) and eventually got to the promenade overlooking the sea. Langstone Rock was to my right and to my left, I could see the entrance to the River Exe and the Exe Estuary, with Exmouth Beach in the distance. Where the local birders actually view from I don't know yet, but checking out the sea with just my binoculars, I could see good numbers of Sandwich Terns passing over the water and some very distant Gannets, but nothing more interesting than that, which was disappointing after walking all the way down here. I have got a good idea on where to park to do Dawlish Warren Nature Reserve, which I shall probably try tomorrow hopefully. But it is a family holiday and therefore, I have to be patient with the rest of the family and what they want to do. I am pretty pissed off with my Nikon camera not working properly, so any future photos from here will probably be from my mobile camera. Groan!
Back in Hampshire, birding pals Geoff Farwell and Andy Fisher went to the 'seawatching' building at Gilkicker to do a spot of 'seawatching'. Geoff picked up Andy in his car and before setting off, Geoff got to check Andy’s moth box (sounds rude!). Here, he found a Dusky Thorn, Tree-lichen Beauty, 5 Riband Wave, Brimstone, Willow Beauty and a Lesser Broad-bordered Yellow Underwing. While at Gilkicker, the boys found their first Arctic Skua for the year plus 8 Common Scoter and 3 Gannets going through the Solent plus a Wheatear on the beach. Fellow ‘Lazee’ Mark Francis had earlier seen an Arctic Skua off Hill Head along with some Kittiwakes and another fellow ‘Lazee’, Andy Friend, had the same species off Sandy Point, Hayling. Meanwhile, 'seawatching' sightings off Dawlish Warren today included 37 Manx Shearwater, 9 Arctic and 4 Pomarine Skua, 3 Storm Petrels and 2 Arctic Terns. Very nice.
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