Winter Magic up the Creeks of Cornwall and Devon

Curlew, Teignmouth

Much as I love the thrill of staring eyeball to eyeball with cetaceans around the coast of SW England, it’s actually quite unusual for the sea to be flat enough to venture out to where they live in a kayak. Especially in autumn and winter. Particularly this autumn, it’s been very windy.

There have been just a couple of days, including this little porpoise adventure with Dave. Lovely to hear a dozen or so ‘Puffing Pigs’ doing their stuff in their quiet and unobtrusive manner.

Dave and Porpoise Friend

So it’s time to head for the shelter of the creeks. The stronger the wind, the further inland you need to go. Fortunately there’s a lot to choose from around the coast and there’s always somewhere to baffle anything the weather can throw at you.

Early morning during winter in the upper estuaries is a good time to sneak a view of an otter, providing you are absolutely completely and utterly quiet and scrutinise every inch of bank as you glide silently along. Blink, and you’ve missed it…

Otter, Torridge

Carrick Roads adjacent to Falmouth is wide and exposed and although only moderately sheltered from the wind it is protected from swell, of which there has been a lot recently. It attracts a nice range of open coast birds such as these beautiful Great Northern Divers which have migrated in from Iceland or Greenland to spend the winter with us. Back news if you’re a snack-sized fish…look at that dagger of a beak!

Great Northern Divers, Carrick Roads

A surprise sighting when I paid a visit to the area a couple of weeks ago was this Black Guillemot (black only in summer plumage). A rare visitor to the south of England, they breed up north.

Black Guillemot

Teignmouth estuary in Devon has the combined attraction of waterbirds AND trains. Although chilling at high tide just feet from the thundering carriages, these Oystercatchers don’t stir from their slumber as the trains clatter by.

Roosting Oystercatchers (and HST 43016!)

It was good to see Oli, the unusually-marked Oystercatcher with the white head, at Teignmouth during my last visit. He’s been around for at least five years now.

Oli the leucistic Oystercatcher

The Fowey estuary takes a lot of beating. The water is exceptionally clear because the Fowey river originates on the granite uplands of Bodmin Moor.

Dave, Paul and I ventured far, far up the creek during our last visit.

Paul and Dave, Lerryn

Providing you keep paddling at a steady rate and keep quiet the roosting Redshank will let you pass without spooking (them…or you!).

Redshank relaxing , Fowey Estuary

Likewise the local harbour seal. Not as absurdly curious as the Grey Seals, but certainly casually interested in a passing kayak.

Cornish Harbour Seal

As a last resort I take to the canals to seek some sheltered paddling. There’s not a lot of choice. Bude, Exeter and Grand Western Canal (GWC) in Tiverton.

If you like autumnal scenes it’s got to be the GWC:

Grand Western Canal, Extreme Photogenicity.

It’s even better of you are a Kingfisher fan:

Kingfisher, Grand Western Canal

The Flight of the Ospreys…Scotland to Senegal, via Fowey!

Osprey chilling out after a bath, Fowey

Two of the Ospreys I had the great pleasure of watching in the Fowey estuary in September and October had blue ‘Darvic’ rings on their left leg, which means they come from Scotland. English and Welsh birds have the ring on the right leg.

The first was a bird that flew over my head on 21 September. Not easy to photograph from a kayak…one second you are paddling, ten seconds later after the Osprey has appeared you’ve got to be zoomed in and ready to click that shutter. So I was pleased when one (and only one) of about twenty images was not a blurry disaster, which is usually the case with my efforts with birds in the air.

It was only when I reviewed the pics when I got home that I noticed the ring on the left leg:

Scottish ringed Osprey

I didn’t see that bird again, unlike the second Scottish Osprey that hung around the upper estuary for a fortnight in mid October. Appropriately, its favoured haunt was a horizontal branch under the canopy of a ragged Scots pine overlooking the water.

Blue 541, a taste of home amongst the gnarled boughs of an old Scots Pine

Scottish Bird, Blue 541

The ring on this bird was moderately easy to read when I zoomed in…

Blue 541 ring

The ring, when I zoomed in on pic when I got home, was fairly easy to read. So I made some enquiries and pinged out several emails to Osprey groups and ringing websites but without success.

Until a couple of weeks ago when some of my friends fell into conversation with a fellow passenger on the aeroplane back from a birdwatching trip to Gambia. This passenger was Joanna Dailey from the Kielder Osprey Project in Northumberland and within a few hours of sending her my images of the ringed birds she had replied with their origins.

The first tag she thought was Blue 195, although it was indistinct on the photo. This bird was ringed in Abernethy, Cairngorm in 2019, so was an adult bird. Interestingly, this is the only adult Osprey I have seen at Fowey. All the others have been juveniles, which are quite easy to distinguish with pale margins to the feathers of their back.

Amazingly, this bird has been observed in Senegal by Osprey fan Jean-Marie Dupart, who surveys the Ospreys there. Here’s his photo:

Osprey Blue 195, pic by Jean-Marie Dupart

The second bird, Blue 541, is also involved in another mega-coincidence which is arguably even more remarkable. It was ringed in the nest by Brian Etheridge in Millbuie Forest, Black Isle, Highland on 21 July this year.

While attempting to apply the next ring to its nest-mate the bird, which was close to fledging so full of feistiness, struggled and the ring fell out of reach, so Brian had to use the next number in the sequence, 543.

And, would you believe, Joanna saw Blue 543, nest-mate to the Osprey that was at Fowey for a fortnight, in Gambia a couple of weeks ago!

Hopefully the two youngsters will now BOTH be safely installed in their wintering grounds in West Africa, and with a bit of luck I might even renew my acquaintance with them next year.

Osprey, Fowey

How Many Dolphins are in that Pod?

Flurry of Fins. Common Dolphin pod, Torbay

Trying to work out how many individual dolphins are in that flurry of fins is not easy. It’s difficult even when they are mooching about in a relaxed manner, because there’s always a lot more underwater than you might think.

Dolphins at Dawn, Mounts Bay

The people who know about this kind of stuff say that because underestimation is the problem, doubling or even tripling your best guess gives the most accurate representation of the pod size.

Really? I have always been sceptical about this so have simply recorded my best punt at the number I think are present without doubling or tripling it. I wouldn’t like to write down in my wildlife log book an exaggeration of what I actually saw. That wouldn’t sit well with my scientific scruples.

Common Dolphins shifting up a gear

However I have recently discovered that when it comes to counting dolphins, I am shockingly bad at it. This was quite a surprise because I have always considered recording lists of bird and animal species, numbers, kayak miles paddled and all manner of nerdy statistics to be one of my specialist subjects. I’ve done it ever since I could wield a writing instrument and have a cupboard bulging with dozens of sepia-paged notebooks choc-full of numerical records. So you’d think I could count dolphins accurately in my sleep. Well, it turns out I can’t.

Here is the evidence…just bear in mind that the experts say that the inaccuracies should only apply to the big pods. The larger the pod, the greater the underestimation, understandably. Anyone can count a pod of six or ten correctly, surely?

Not me, apparently.

During a fantastic sunny week in July enjoying a family holiday near Mevagissey, a pod of Common Dolphins appeared unusually close to the shore early one morning. I sneaked out to investigate by kayak, while Henry (eldest son) launched his drone from the clifftop.

Mevagissey paddling perfection (pic: Henry Kirkwood)

I sat and watched them feeding on baitfish from a respectful distance, slicing about across a glass calm turquoise sea, accompanied by a posse of gulls that every so often would dart down to steal a sandeel. All very relaxed.

There was absolutely no excuse for getting the pod size wrong. It was only a small number, I had plenty of time to observe and the sea was like a lake.

There were eight individuals, I was absolutely certain of it… no question…but I was wrong.

As you can see for yourself using the view from above taken by Henry’s drone.

(pic: Henry Kirkwood)

It clearly shows seventeen individual dolphins. What? How could I get it so wrong? The answer is obviously that only a small proportion of the pod are surfacing at any one time, but I thought I made an allowance for that in my head. Clearly not enough.

So the ‘double the number that you think are present’ is just about spot on.

This catastrophic bungle of being unable to count as high as seventeen has prompted me to delve into some of my archive footage of large pods, to re-evaluate the numbers present.

Even this small pod of six could easily look like three if viewed from afar, without the benefit of being able to see the others underwater.

Take a look at this next milling group of Common Dolphins, loitering off Dodman Point in August 2018. How many in the pod? My impression was 40. But delve deeper. There are two individuals with a pale dorsal fin. During the thirty second clip these appear four times, so each one surfaces twice. Approximately 110 dolphin appear at the surface during the whole sequence, so if each of them surface twice that gives a total of 55.

Or is it 80, because my overall impression was 40? Or more?

Here’s some really hasty dolphins off Teignmouth…

I recorded the number as 25 but it has got to be more than that. It’s such a blurr of activity that it is difficult to think straight. Therein lies the biggest problem for me. It is so tremendously exciting to find a pod of dolphins from a kayak. It is the culmination of a huge amount of planning and significant physical effort to get out where they might be, and where usually, they are not. So when I do see a pack of fins incising the surface my brain cells fizz, crackle and pop. By the time I have rebooted the system and thought about the mundane task of counting numbers, they have frequently disappeared over the horizon.

A couple more videos of largish pods for you. How many this time?

Torbay this year… recorded as 25. Not on your nellie, it’s a lot more than that. But is it as many as 50?

Confused.com? I certainly am.

Have I seen 640 in total this year, or is it 1280?

Does it really matter, apart from to satisfy my strange compulsion to compile a list?

Well, yes it does, because I send all my marine megafauna records in to official recording sites such as ERCCIS ( Environmental Records Centre for Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly) and Seawatch Foundation. Establishing the population status of these creatures is the first step down the path which leads to their protection and conservation.

Must try harder, could do better.

Photogenically arranged dolphins