Dawlish Warren

Sketch map of Dawlish Warren Nature Reserve

Dawlish Warren Nature Reserve is a spit of land almost closing the Exe Estuary at its mouth. The combination of location and variety of habitat in a small area make it a birdwatching hot spot. The open sea to the South and the more sheltered estuary with its creeks  and sandbanks to the north provide for a variety of seabirds, waders and wildfowl. At time of writing the official 2019 year list for this site is 175 species.

Most of the reserve is sand dunes, grassed over and covered with light scrub in places. There is a small patch of woodland near the visitor centre and around the Greenland Pool which is next to it. In some points storms have pretty much destroyed most of the dunes and taken old paths with them so you'll need to walk along the beach to get out to the furthest point.

The old sand dune path to the hide. This path was washed away in storms.

I usually walk down past the amusements to do a bit of seawatching from the wall and Langstone Rock. The sea bed is gently sloping here and you'll usually find a couple of shag hunting for dabs and you might strike lucky with a great-crested grebe or red-throated diver. Further out you'll almost certainly see kittiwakes and gannets and perhaps a flyby skua or two. There are some mussel beds at the end of Langstone Rock and these attract eiders and scoters. It's worth checking out any stray individuals, I've seen surf scoter and velvet scoter here.

Langstone Rock

Red-throated diver

Between the amusements and the visitor centre there's a roughly-grassed area crisscrossed with decked paths and a very small wooded patch with rough paths working their way through it. This area's quite good for passage migrants, highlights for me over the years have been black redstart, yellow-browed warbler and Siberian chiffchaff.

Black redstart

Passing through the gates just past to the visitor centre, on your left there's the Greenland Pool surrounded by reeds and a bit of woodland, dead ahead it's sandy heath, and to your right there's some dunes and the beach. There are rough paths (and a couple of less rough ones) starting at this gate splitting off and becoming roughly parallel to each other then converging on another gate a few hundred yards along, where the golf course meets the sand dunes.

Greenland Pool

I generally go clockwise round the pool and follow the paths nearest the golf course. The hawthorn bushes on the boundary are popular with finches, sometimes with large flocks of linnets and goldfinches. Cirl buntings can be found in the nearby farmland so it's worth looking out to see if any are about here.

Linnets

Once you get into the open area you start to see more meadow pipits and there's usually a pair of stonechats about and every bramble thicket has its dunnocks, robins and wrens. There are plenty of rock pipits on the beach and dunes to add to the small brown bird collection.

Stonechat

Rock pipit

The gate at the end brings you onto the dunes. Until recently there was a path here running along the boundary with the golf course then turning and dropping down into the bight and on to the hide. This has been destroyed by storms so you now have to drop down to the beach and walk down to Groyne 18 near the end of the point.

Sanderlings

The beach is good for a bit more seawatching — the river cuts a channel out  to sea and the deeper water brings kittiwakes and sea ducks closer to shore, and sometimes you might find a great northern diver. A Bonaparte's gull was a Winter fixture here for a few years.

Ringed plovers, sanderlings and dunlin can be found on the beach around high tide. Further along these may be joined by grey plovers. Gulls — mostly herring and black-headed — loaf about at the end of the point.

At Groyne 18 the grassy dunes drop down to the beach. There are a few rough paths leading into what is almost a small island of sandy heath. I was once lucky enough to find a Dartford warbler in one of the hawthorn bushes a few years back so I always look twice at any dunnocks lurking about.

One of the paths leads nearly straight to the golf course and down towards the hide. It's a two-story hide facing up the estuary, on a clear day you can see up to Countess Wear. The water's calmer on this side of the Warren and the bird life is different. Wintering brent geese feed and roost here. Wigeon and teal can be seen in the salt marshes on your left. The mound directly in front of the hide is a roosting point for waders at high tide. Sometimes the number of oystercatchers and knots here is huge. Looking out into the deeper channels in the estuary you might see red-necked mergansers and in Winter if you look over to the left towards the railway line you've a good chance of seeing "the usual" Slavonian grebe (I've no idea if it's always the same one every year).

Oystercatchers and cormorants from the hide

Brent geese from the hide

The hide's best at high tide, though you have to time your journey carefully now the only path is via the beach. At low tide it's less productive and most of what's around is pretty distant, but every so often something special will tag along with the linnets, pipits and wagtails feeding on the mud. My best bird from this hide was a Richard's pipit, donkeys years ago, being chased around by pied wagtails here at low tide. More usually it's wheatears.

The way back is the way you came, though there are enough paths around for you not to have to exactly retrace your steps all the way.

Seawatching weather at Dawlish Warren

The excellent Dawlish Warren blog provides latest sightings and past records, as well as useful links to other Devon wildlife blogs.