Great Shearwater

An evening seawatch off Teignmouth in the wake of ex-hurricane Nigel saw a single Great Shearwater head south along with five more distant large shearwater sp. Also passing six Balearic Shearwater, eight Sandwich and a Common Tern and an Arctic Skua with a Great Northern Diver on the sea.

Cory's Shearwater

With news of large shearwaters off Budleigh Salterton first thing (thanks Laurie for the text) I headed to Teignmouth after the nursery run for a 1hr 20 minute pre-work seawatch. Despite the stormy conditions visibility was pretty good (at least initially) and I immediately picked up on a steady stream of Balearic Shearwaters heading south - 142 were logged in total, including a couple of groups of 20+. No sign of any large shearwaters for over half an hour when I eventually picked up a Cory's Shearwater in the middle distance at 09:00, an extremely satisfying patch tick for me having missed out on the epic seawatch of July 2017! Four Storm Petrels also went through, with one only a few hundred metres offshore, along with five Arctic Skuas, three Sandwich Terns, numerous Gannets and Kittiwakes and just a handful of Manx Shearwaters.

WeBS

Ten species of wader on the estuary on Sunday morning but nothing unusual noted. Totals were 341 Oystercatchers, 40+ Curlew, 17 Dunlin, 10 Ringed Plovers, eight Common Sandpipers, five Greenshanks, two Turnstones, two Whimbrel and singles of Redshank and Black-tailed Godwit. Also noted 36 Canada Geese, 25 Mallards, 10 Mute Swans, 26 Little Egrets, 12 Cormorants, a Kingfisher and a Sandwich Tern.

Osprey double act

Great to see two Ospreys circling over the upper estuary on Tuesday morning; there were subsequent sightings of at least one bird from Passage House later in the day, and presumably one of the two drifted over Kingsteignton at 10:30 this morning (my second sighting from home this year). Waders between Flow Point and Passage House on Tuesday included 58 Curlew, four Whimbrel, 16 Greenshanks, six Common Sandpipers, four Dunlin, two Ringed Plovers and a Black-tailed Godwit.