PRAWLE POINT / BEESANDS LEY / WEST CHARLETON MARSH
23th October 2004
A wet and windy day in the South Hams (by Richard Swinbank) When five of us met up in East Prawle, we were all wondering whether we really should have bothered to turn out on such a windy, wet and misty October morning. We agreed that a circular walk around the area wouldn’t be very pleasant. But, having come all that way we decided to drive down to the National Trust car park at Prawle Point to have a look to see what was around. The previous time I had been there, it had been a sunny Spring morning, and the bushes had been alive with birds - including my first British Cirl Buntings. But today, all we saw at first was a rather bedraggled Blackbird. Nevertheless, as we stood in the wind and rain looking out over the sea, we started to tick off several more species - quite a few Gannets, some Guillemots, and a Kestrel overhead. We decided to move on to Beesands, lured by the prospect of a hide to keep the rain at bay. The hide gave us a good view over the Ley, which held good numbers of Tufted Duck and Shoveler, with a pair of Pochard and a few Mallards. We had excellent views of a Snipe poking about in the mud just a few feet away. With Reed Buntings, Chiffchaffs and several more, we had seen about 30 different species by the time we went back to our cars for lunch. Having visited both our planned venues by lunchtime, the question was: should we call it a day, or go somewhere else on the way home. I had heard that a new hide had recently been opened at West Charleton, so we decided to give it a try. It’s just as well there was only a small group of us, since parking in the village was quite limited - and the hide wasn’t very big either. The hide was really well situated, with one side looking out over West Charleton Marsh and the other, the Kingsbridge estuary. The mix of birds on the marsh was quite different from what we had seen at Beesands: Teal, Wigeon, Little Egret, Little Grebe, Curlew, Black-tailed Godwit and another Snipe. Since the tide was high, there was less to see on the estuary side, but there were roosting Oystercatchers and godwits on the shoreline, and a couple of terns fishing for their lunch. The day that had seemed so unpromising turned out pretty well, after all, with some 48 species seen.
Common Tern
Gannet
Grey Heron
Mute Swan
Wigeon