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It’s been a long time, been a long time…

by on Nov.21, 2023, under Northern Bottlenose Whale, Tourism

Not sure where the time went, but I just realised it’s nearly two years since I wrote a blog post!

For the last couple of years our NEWT-related activities have mainly been based around our pelagic season between May and September, delivering events at the Battlesteads Observatory, and still dealing with the backlog of bookings created by the 2020/2021 lockdowns. Although we haven’t been scheduling tours, we’ve still been delivering them regularly, and we’re thinking about how we add scheduled tours to our calendar again 🙂 We’re actually down to the final three trips still remaining to be delivered after delays due to COVID – both ours and our clients – and poor weather.

As well as NEWT events, I’ve been leading holidays for two other tour operators and spending May-September since 2021 studying Kittiwakes for Shoney Wind as part of the team behind the new ‘Kittiwakery’ artificial nesting structure on the south shore of the Tyne at Saltmeadows. In August this year I was part of the wildlife guide/guest speaker team from Ocean Wildlife Encounters, on a cruise from Dover to the Faroe Islands via Shetland (and back to Dover via Orkney) and I’ll be doing more guiding with OWE going forward.

Perhaps the thing I’m planning to do much more often though is write blog posts, so they’ll be covering our tours, photography, cruise guiding, Kittiwakes and, of course, dolphins 🙂

Northern Bottlenose Whale Hyperoodon ampullatus, Kaldbaksfjord, Streymoy, Faroe Islands 10/08/2023
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Seascape Photography 23/01/22

by on Jan.28, 2022, under Photography

Sunday was our seascape photography workshop with Peter, after a few delays due to the weather…

With an experienced photographer, camera settings aren’t an important consideration to concentrate on so we spent some time looking at how to predict which waves are going to break obligingly and chatted about compositional techniques 🙂

Generische Medikamente können gefälscht werden und einen stark negativen Einfluss auf den menschlichen Organismus ausüben. Zu schweren Nebenwirkungen wie einem lebensbedrohlichen viagra bestellen Blutdruckabfall führen kann. Wir empfehlen auf natürliche Alternativen zu diesem Mittel zurückzugreifen.
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Punk’s not dead; Otter mini-Safari 22/01/22

by on Jan.23, 2022, under Druridge Bay

Yesterday was our first mini-Safari this year, after filling the first three weeks of the year with stargazing events and all of the planning for other projects we’re going to be involved in this year, so it was great to meet up with Clare and Lisa, then Monica and Michael, for a few hours around our local patch

The Wansbeck is a vast mudflat currently, and after a stop at the weir, where cormorant, little grebe and goldeneye were all feeding, we walked upriver to Castle Island. Scanning through the roosting gulls and dabbling ducks, a larger white bird was unhelpfully directly in the glare from the sun. There’s no mistaking the long thick legs and ruffled crest of a spoonbill though, and we found a spot where it was easier to see as it obligingly woke up, preened, looked around and then seemed to be on a mission as it marched along the muddy margins. Cormorants stretched, little egrets darted at small prey in the shallows, redshanks flew off calling, the eerie cries of curlew echoed along the valley and, uncharacteristically, a single fieldfare was hopping around a large paddock.

As dusk approached only five starlings appeared at a regular roost site as lapwings were scattered by a sparrowhawk and then teal and wigeon took to the air as a juvenile marsh harrier drifted over. Competing against the spoonbill in the hairstyle stakes, red-breasted mergansers paraded in front of us and the harrier reappeared…accompanied by a second juvenile, and then a male harrier joined the party and started talon-grappling with one of the juveniles as a Cetti’s warbler delivered it’s explosive calls from deep in the reeds and Jupiter shone through the evening twilight.

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Waves of panic; Otter mini-Safari 16/11/21

by on Nov.17, 2021, under Druridge Bay

The time of year when we have to start mini-Safaris early afternoon always seems to creep up before unexpectedly arriving.

I met up with James, Michael and Colin ahead of an afternoon around Druridge Bay searching for otters and our first site had played host to four of them earlier in the day! Regular ripples of panic spread through the wigeon out on the water and that turned into terror as a juvenile marsh harrier made it’s way up and down both sides of the water. A little egret flew over a wader roost that was mainly common redshank, with a sprinkling of turnstones and a couple of common snipe. Our second site for the afternoon had at least two marsh harriers, including the same juvenile we’d seen earlier, and as pink-footed geese yapped overhead, water rails squealed, a Cetti’s warbler belted out it’s song and starlings blew past like leaves on the wind, the flocks of coot, mallard, wigeon, shoveler and gadwall kept nervously moving away from one reedbed as roe deer grazed near the water’s edge and dusk took hold of the little remaining daylight.

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Bespoke seascape photography 15/11/21

by on Nov.17, 2021, under Photography

Monday was a 1-2-1 seascape photography workshop for Louisa and we started with exposure time, aperture and ISO (if you’ve never used a mirrorless camera, it makes it so much easier to see the effect of changing settings before actually taking a photo). With a tide falling from high, new compositions were presenting themselves right up to the point where it was cold and getting dark and with exposure and composition sorted, Louisa concentrated on judging which waves were going to break obligingly over the foreground rocks 🙂 I’m looking forward to our follow-up Zoom call/editing session to look at Louisa’s favourite images from the workshop.

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Autumn colours workshop 14/11/21

by on Nov.17, 2021, under Photography

Sunday was Sandra’s Autumn Colours photography workshop, which had been delayed for several reasons since 2019! We concentrated on exposure time, aperture and ISO settings as well as looking at composition, exploring how the angle of light can make a drastic change to the scene that’s in front of the camera and playing around with ICM (intentional camera movement) 🙂

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NEWT’s 2020 (pelagic) vision

by on Nov.17, 2021, under North Sea

It was another busy summer out on the North Sea, searching for whales, dolphins, porpoises and other marine wildlife. It was an incredibly successful season too, with a substantial majority of our sailings encountering cetaceans 🙂 Here’s a selection of images from early July to late September…

We’ve arranged most of our sailings for 2022, and we’ll be making online booking available from early next week

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Catching up

by on Nov.17, 2021, under Druridge Bay

It’s been an incredibly busy summer and autumn for NEWT. After a long challenging time for small businesses since March 2020 we suddenly found ourselves under a deluge of work. Martin’s been leading wildlife and photography holidays for two other companies as well as guiding our safari trips and pelagics and leading events at the award-winning Battlesteads Observatory.

Our safari trips over the last few months have concentrated on the Druridge Bay area, with marsh harrier, little egret, roe deer and a selection of waders and wildfowl all featuring regularly, alongside an ever-increasing starling murmuration, hunted incessantly by sparrowhawks, occasional appearances by barn owls and, in the last month, yapping skeins of pink-footed geese speckling the sky as dusk approaches. Family mini-Safaris focused on the smaller creatures, with spiders. dragonflies and banded snails all watched with fascination by the younger participants on our tours, and we’re adding rockpooling activities as an option to next year’s family bookings.

We’ll be posting a gallery of images from our 2020 pelagic season shortly, as well as posts about our three tours/workshops already this week!

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Living on the edge; Otter mini-Safari 05/08/21

by on Aug.06, 2021, under Druridge Bay

One thing that’s always impressed me about wildlife is the almost constant effort needed just to stay alive, contrasting with the technologically advanced, comfortable, lives that many of us lead…

I met up with Cath, Andy, Beth and Dan for an evening around Druridge Bay, and the weather was pleasant…particularly compared to what was forecast for the next few hours! Mute swans were feeding unhurriedly, grey herons were stalking along rushy edges, black-tailed godwits were wading and probing, and bumblebees were shifting position to take shelter underneath teasel heads – often a sign of a drop in temperature and approaching bad weather. Swallows, martins and swifts were hawking insects as a lone ruff flew through.

As the wind started to pick up, and the first of several heavy showers passed through, a great crested grebe with a single juvenile aggressively evicted a little grebe, also with a single juvenile, from a prime patch of amphibious bistort, as cormorants sat motionless, two Arctic skuas muscled their way into the stiffening breeze, and Sandwich, common and Arctic terns obligingly lined up alongside one another like an animated field guide to separating confusion species 🙂

Seven starlings was a start to a murmuration that eventually built to several hundred birds, as three marsh harriers went to roost and a sparrowhawk pestered and pursued the starlings repeatedly. We saw it pass by at least a dozen times without any apparent success by the time the starlings had all settled into the reeds, expending vital energy in a late evening attempt to feed before nightfall.

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Triple crown; NEWT’s North Sea pelagic 07/07/21

by on Jul.09, 2021, under Bottlenose Dolphin, North Sea

Wednesday’s 4hr pelagic had a forecast that promised rain, although we only had a few drops, and it took just a few minutes for our first cetacean to appear as a harbour porpoise crossed the mouth of the Tyne in front of us. 90 minutes of intense scanning eventually produced bottlenose dolphins off Whitley Bay and they swam alongside us for an hour as we headed slowly south, finally leaving as we passed the mouth of the river again. On a glassy sea we headed beyond the Tyne and with conditions so perfect I spotted fins that were 2nm ahead of us…and then the white-beaked dolphins appeared 🙂

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