The spoonbills at Isley March on the Taw estuary were the main draw for me when I contacted my friend Roy Churchill and arranged to meet up in Barnstaple.  Roy is a keen photographer, birder and voluntary warden for the RSPB.  He knows his local patch like the back of his hand and his website, Photos of North Devon, is a regular visiting point for Devon birders.  By the time my planned visit was imminent, Roy had also found a red-crested pochard and a grey phalarope to add to my must see list.

We kicked off the visit with a trip to the east side of the estuary where ther was a small pond where the red-crested pochard had joined a group of bread-hungry hybrid mallards for the past two weeks.

Unfortunately the pochard didn't show but I saw an unfamiliar sight of a moorhen climbing a reedmace to feed on the head.  Whether this is a local peculiarity or a widespread phenomenon I have no idea but it was new to me.  I only managed a quick snap but I was glad to record the behaviour.

Having blanked on the pochard, we set off across the estuary and then downstream in the direction of Westwas Ho! and turned off down towards Appledore to an area of sandy grassland and dunes known as the Skern in Northam Burrows Country Park.  Over the last two weeks had been raining heavily and there were puddles everywhere and one of these had been adopted by a grey phalarope.  It had spent 5 days in this shallow water bobbing about and gyrating more or less on the spot and it was seemingly oblivious to the birders, photographers and dog walkers who populate the area.  It was possible to get to within 6 feet of the bird without apparently stressing it in the least.  It wasn't that it wasn't aware of us, it just didn't seem to see us as a threat.  However, at one point a crow flew over and it was immediately ready to fly off.

Having shot 8GB of photos and video and lain face down in the squelchy grass to get my last ones, we were ready to move off and we moved upstream again, this time to Fremington Pil and then to Fremington Quay where the pil joins the estuary. The muddy inlet was at half tide and had a big population of waders including Curlew, redshank, greenshank, oystercatchers and apparently there are usually one or two spotted redshank.  Although we were a fair way off and the light was getting pretty dire, I managed one or two shots which I've added to the galleries here.  Although they aren't great pictures, the greenshank and curlew shots were still better than any I had in my collection before.

The last port of call which we had deliberately timed for high tide, was Isley Marsh.  On a previous visit at high tide we had seen several spoonbills forced to retreat to a small patch of land left above the incoming water.  Unfortunately on this occasion, it wasn't such a big tide and not one of the six spoonbills known to be around was visible.  However, we carried on downstream for half a mile or so and encountered some birders visitng from Nothamptonshire.  They were sure they had just seen a female black resdstart some way off on an old quay.  We stood with them and waited for fifteen minutes and were about to give up when all of a sudden it landed on a railing about eighty feet away.  Although I was using the Canon 500mm and a 1.4x converter with the 7D, it was too far for a great picture but I still managed a reasonable record shot.

Many thanks to Roy for hosting another great day and for boosting my bird tally!