There can be something so dreary about the short, damp days of November and we like to get away if we can. Last week we joined a four day Naturetrek holiday based in the South Devon fishing town of Brixham, looking for what wildlife the region can offer in mid November:

Our home for the trip was the friendly Berry Head Hotel, situated near the end of Berry Head Penninsula and looking across Tor Bay and out to sea:

A number of grey seals regularly lounge around in Brixham harbour and we could hear their ethereal singing all the way along the headland at our hotel:

I took a lot of photos of them:

Each of the seals has distinctive markings and can be individually identified by the Seal Project, a charity that monitors and protects the seals of South Devon.

A few purple sandpipers spend the winter on the harbour’s breakwater every year:

And several rock pipits were also poking around the seaweed on the breakwater:

Brixham still has a busy fishing port and a lot of the vessels are beam trawlers such as BM-15 below. The wheeled beam and some of the net has been hauled up here so that we can see it:

Not knowing much about fishing, I found this diagram below helpful in understanding what was going on:

A lot of rusty old beams from the trawlers are stored on a jetty off the breakwater and apparently these are still sometimes used:

South Devon is the best place in the country to see cirl bunting. In 1991 this species was on the absolute brink of extinction in the UK with just a hundred pairs remaining in South Devon. But since then there has been an enormous effort to turn their fortunes around. Happily, by 2016 there were 1078 pairs – mainly still in South Devon but also now including a small population further west in Cornwall where they have been reintroduced. Hopefully the number will be even larger when the next count is done. We went up onto Berry Head to see some cirl bunting coming down to seed that is put out for them:

Mike, our guide for the trip, has been birding in the region his whole life and had been the Devon county bird recorder for a decade. We met people he knew wherever we went which was very nice. He is also an artist and the bird illustrations in RSPB and other bird hides across the country are all his:

The four day Naturetrek holiday included three boat trips – one on the deep waters of the Dart estuary, the second on the shallow, muddy Exe Estuary and the final one around Tor Bay.

There are so many lovely rivers in South Devon. The Dart rises high on Dartmoor and then flows forty-seven miles through south Devon down to the sea at Dartmouth. But the last road bridge is at Totnes, six miles inland, and below there you will need to use a ferry to get across the river. The Lower Ferry operates between Dartmouth and Kingswear near the mouth of the river. It is basically an unpowered pontoon that is pushed and pulled along by a tug boat:

The Higher Ferry, slightly to the north, travels across the river on a cable:

The Mew Stone projects from the sea just beyond the mouth of the Dart. We saw a grey seal that had got itself a long way up the rock and would now presumably have to wait for a high tide to get safely back down again:

It did look a bit sad:

I was pleased to see a shag and a cormorant together on the Mew Stone so that I could revise the difference between them:

Gulls around the Mew Stone:

The Mew Stone presents quite a hazard to shipping and there are navigational buoys guarding it. The day after our River Dart boat trip we had distant views back to the rock from Slapton Sands and we were amazed and delighted to spot our old friend THV Patricia working on the Mew Stone buoys. We often see her maintaining the light vessel and buoys that guard the perilous Goodwin Sands back home and it felt slightly disorientating to stumble across her somewhere else:

Along with her sister ship, Galatea, she is operated by Trinity House, responsible for the lighthouses, light vessels and navigational buoys around the English and Welsh coast.

One day we caught the Higher Ferry across the Dart in the minibus and drove down to Slapton Sands:

It was the site of a terrible disaster in April 1944 when Exercise Tiger, a large-scale rehearsal for the Normandy Invasion, was taking place there. As well as there being a friendly fire incident where hundreds of men were accidentally killed on the beach, the rehearsal was also attacked by fast German E-boats. Four ships loaded with tanks and men were hit or sunk. The total death toll of American servicemen during Exercise Tiger was an appalling 946.

Start Point lies at the southern end of Slapton Sands:

Although it was a very windy day, we made a diversion to the exposed Start Point because we could see lots of gannets diving into the turbulent waters there.

The birds were after the garfish which gather at Start Point:

The gannets were not the only ones after the garfish though. As we stood and watched, we could see several Atlantic bluefin tuna surfacing as they hunted the garfish from below. The tuna are up to two metres long and have returned to UK waters in recent years after decades of absence. It was so exciting to see them – the highlight of the trip for me, although I am afraid that I didn’t manage to get a photo of them to show you.

From Start Point, we could see the remains of the village of Hallsands at the bottom the cliffs:

In 1891 the village had a population of 159, living in 37 houses and with a chapel and a pub called The London Inn. Most of the villagers depended on crab fishing on the sand and shingle banks out to sea that also protected the village from easterly storms. But in the 1890s it was decided to expand the Naval Dockyard near Plymouth and large amounts of sand and gravel were dredged offshore from Hallsands for the construction of the docks. But with reduced protection from its sandbanks, parts of the village started to get damaged by storms and, in 1902, the dredging licence was revoked. However, it was already too late. On 26 January 1917 a storm effectively destroyed the entire village and, by the end of that year, only one house remained habitable.

It was a very cold day for our trip up the Exe estuary. Around a thousand dark-bellied brent geese overwinter on the estuary, arriving there every autumn from Siberia:

The four geese in the centre of the photo below are juveniles with parallel white lines on their wings:

On the final day of the trip we had a most enjoyable trip around Tor Bay on a lovely sunny November day. We saw at least four great northern divers out in the bay:

And a peregrine falcon on the cliffs:

There is a mussel farm close to Brixham harbour, as well as this oyster farm further out into the bay:

I have a soft spot for herring gulls and we had a close encounter with quite a large group of them out in Tor Bay. The skipper threw some bread from the boat and in no time at all we were being hotly pursued:

It was an amazing sight:

Since they were keeping pace with the moving boat, it was easy to take photos of them in flight:

This adult had a very full crop:

A juvenile with the urban sprawl around Tor Bay:

There was some in-flight bickering:

But they were willing to put in a lot of effort just to claim a crust of white bread:

I have probably included more herring gull photos than I should, but it was a fantastic sight and I can’t make a decision on which to leave out:

We had had a great time in South Devon, seeing and learning a lot. Despite a poor weather forecast it actually scarcely rained at all and, although it was certainly cold and windy at times, we consider ourselves very fortunate. After the trip we headed even further west to Cornwall to spend a few days with one of our daughters and her family who have recently moved to the lovely town of Perranporth on the north coast.

It had already been a boat-heavy week with three boat trips and an admiration of the Brixham fishing fleet, but we rounded this off with a visit to the excellent National Maritime Museum in Falmouth. They have so many interesting vessels on display there, presented in a user-friendly way:

But all this was a long way from home. It was a seven hour drive back, which featured good road conditions and only three short stops. A lengthy journey indeed but one that, with a daughter now in Cornwall, we will be doing more frequently in the coming years: