An afternoon on the Exe river

This afternoon a friend and I joined 98 other keen birders to go for a cruise on the river Exe to see what winter wildlife we could see. The weather was varied from blue skies to light hail. I was wrapped up very warm having done this before and I had a blanket to put over our legs. We set off in one direction, then the boat turned around and we were going to go downstairs. However, I spotted a seat right at the front of the boat next to the pilot with a bonus heater blasting out hot air, it was actually too warm at times but we weren’t for moving. We saw a great variety of birds including many avocets(main shot), cormorants, shags, many different species of gulls, oystercatchers, bar tailed godwits, redshanks, greenshanks, dunlin, red breasted mergansers, Little egrets, varios ducks, grey plover, turnstones, a peregrin falcon and a great northern diver which to the commentator was the icing on the cake and not forgetting the common seal (see extra) and grey seal.
My photos weren’t great as they were all shot through glass.