Tuesday’s North Pennines Prestige tour was a complete contrast to Wednesday’s Otter Safari. The weather was much nicer than on Tuesday as I collected Mark and Clare from Alnwick. Our Otter Safaris, although structured to maximise our clients’ chances of getting good views of Otters, always produce lots of other wildlife as well. This one was no exception, with excellent views of Red Squirrel, Roe Deer, Brown Hare and Little Owl, amongst all of the usual suspects. Unusually, we were struggling to find an otter, so I had one last throw of the dice…however, the nice weather had brought out lots of holidaymakers and they appeared to be concentrated around that last chance 🙁 Clare, after watching a ‘sleek, shiny lump’ hidden in a small channel in the reeds, that she decided couldn’t be an otter, was concerned that the lump had now vanished! Then, the behaviour we’d been watching for; Teal and Mallard began to leave the safety of the reeds and head out into the open water. More importantly, they were doing this in sequence along the edge of the pool. Sure enough, there was the sleek, dark shape of an otter working it’s way through the reedbed 🙂 Not the best views, but Mark did see it lift it’s head, just before a group of holidaymakers appeared in front of the hide! One last view as it bounded along a furrow in the field behind the pool, and then the ducks all settled back down. They really are an excellent indicator; they know when a predator is close, and they know when it’s far enough away to stop worrying. The conclusion to two of the most enjoyable days we’ve had with clients since our first safari.
Category: Otter
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The future naturalists
In the late nineties and early noughties, when I was a committee member of the Northumberland & Tyneside Bird Club, the issue of the ‘next generation’ of birdwatchers, and the recruitment of new members, was often discussed. Like many organisations, the average age of the club’s membership was increasing by one every year (which isn’t that surprising; you would need an awful lot of new, young members to affect that particular statistic). Committee attitudes varied from genuinely concerned through not thinking there was an issue to, and I still find this one hard to believe. not wanting new, inexperienced, birdwatchers to join at all.
We frequently hear wildlife ‘celebrities’ bemoaning the fact that young people aren’t interested in wildlife. Are they right in that assumption? I had chance to consider this last week – August is a busy time for family bookings for NEWT (not surprisingly) and we had an Otter mini-Safari, with a family who had sons aged 12 and 15, and a Druridge Bay mini-Safari, where the family had a 9-year old son and 6-year old and 2 year-old daughters. Both trips were very succesful; Otters performing right in front of us on the first one and a wide range of spiders, wasps, bees, moths, butterflies and damselflies on the second….and all of the children were enthusiastic. On Thursday evening, we helped to lead a Bat Walk in Choppington Woods. The walk was fully booked, with 16 participants, and this was mainly families. Despite having to wait for the first bats to appear, enthusiasm levels stayed high and eventually we had them hunting close to us. Two of the children managed to locate a slight gap in the trees and discovered that this was where the bats were hunting. With a bat detector, and the keen eyesight of the young, they were enthralled for nearly 2 hours. There is a generation of young naturalists out there; we just need to work out how to engage, encourage and support them.
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As the sun goes down
Martin had just returned from leading a mini-safari when the ‘phone rang; “can you organise an otter safari for us this evening please?” Flexibility has always been a given for NEWT; a late summer tour of Southwest Northumberland, birdwatching in the depths of the winter, photographing otters, searching for rare orchids, an impromptu whale and dolphin cruise for a top national journalist. If we can make it happen then we will…
The field full of Greylag Geese were sitting quietly, nibbling away at the grass. Behind them, a Roe Deer was working it’s way slowly along the fence line and three Brown Hares were alternately running across the field and impersonating clods of earth. A few Starlings circled overhead and were soon joined by another small group…and another…and another. Eventually over a thousand were swirling over the reedbeds. The big loose flock suddenly condensed into a tight ball as a Sparrowhawk began pursuing them. A juvenile Marsh Harrier made a brief appearance before dropping into it’s nightime roost site and distant flocks of corvids and Wood Pigeons were sprinkled across the sky like poppy seeds.
Of our main quarry there was no sign; all of the ducks and swans were paddling around calm and contented, so we moved on to site number two. Another set of panic-free wildfowl…and time for a strategic decision; do we wait and hope, or check a site where yesterday afternoon there was so much agitation, and aversion to one corner of a pool, that there had to be a big predator lurking in the reeds?
The decision to move sites was made and we settled to watch a flock of waders. Roosting on a mudflat and seemingly unstressed…but then a wave of panic rippled through the flock. Calm restored, but only for a few seconds, before the worried calling started again. Then a flock of Canada Geese arrived for the evening roost. A few minutes of calm settled over the pool and we watched the sunset; vivid slashes of pink, then orange, cut across the sky and visibility was so good that we could see The Cheviot and Hedgehope, many miles away to the northwest. Then it happened, chaos as all of the geese tried to take off; with only a few metres to the edge of the water they didn’t really have a chance and they stumbled onto the mudflat, scattering Lapwings left, right and centre. Surely, there could only be one cause for the panic? And there it was; diving gracefully through the reflection of the sunset, making a beeline for the geese before changing course and heading away into the deepening shadows of the night. Then it was time for us to do the same.