Duckponds Exclusion Zone
As the adopted name for the area implies, The Duckpond is a very important place for waterfowl in the winter months. The river Exe supports internationally significant numbers of ducks and geese in winter, numbering up to 25,000 individuals at the peak of the season. The Exe is also the winter home to 1,000 dark-bellied brent geese, 1% of the entire world’s population of these little geese.
The birds flock to the lower end of the Exe Estuary at the beginning of winter to feed on the large eelgrass beds which grow there. This is the most nutritious food for the geese and important for them in replacing calories lost in their massive migration from Siberian Russia. They feed in this area between September and December by which time they have eaten pretty much all of the available eel grass and move on to grazing areas adjacent to the estuary. They can only feed effectively on eel grass when it is suspended in shallow water, and so feed on the plant as the tide is coming in and going out, resting on the water in the intervening period.
A single disruption event may seem harmless, and to some extent it is, however it is the combined effect of repeated flushing of roosting birds which can have a catastrophic effect on them. In cold winters, with repeated disturbance, it has been known for entire flocks of birds to die within a window of a very few hours. The problem is that they appear healthy and unaffected until the very last minute - and when energy levels in the birds fall below a critical level, they appear to die spontaneously.
It is our duty as residents or users of the site to ensure that these globally important populations of birds leave our shores as healthy as they arrived and, to do this, it has been identified that repeated disturbance is an avoidable problem. It is shown that kites and flocks of birds can co-exist happily on the water, as long as adequate distance is kept between humans and birds. This is the reason for not implementing a total ban on the estuary.