Northern Experience Wildlife Tours

Tag: Arctic Skua

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

    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…

  • Dolphin days; NEWT’s Northumberland Ultimate Pelagic 26/08/17

    With a forecast of light westerlies and good weather, I arrived at Royal Quays ahead of our 10hr Northumberland Ultimate Pelagic confident that we’d have a memorable day offshore… Gannet, Fulmar, Kittiwake, Guillemot, Razorbill, Puffin, Manx Shearwater, Great Skua and Arctic Skua all gave obliging views and then we started finding Minke Whales 🙂  Continuing…

  • Pirates of Cullerfornia; NEWT’s North Sea pelagic 12/07/17

    Offshore from the small seaside town of Cullercoats, there be pirates…

  • Don’t stop believin’…; NEWT’s North Sea Pelagic 02/09/16

    Friday was the latest of our 2016 pelagic trips from Royal Quays and, once we’d recovered the participant who’d inadvertently headed to the ferry terminal, we sailed north east from the Tyne.  A few Sooty Shearwaters passed by and one was rafting with Guillemots, Fulmars soared effortlessly in the stiffening breeze and an Arctic Skua…

  • Bow-riding beauties; NEWT’s North Sea Pelagic 13/08/16

    Saturday was the first of our 10hr ‘Northumberland Ultimate Pelagic‘ trips this year, and I arrrived at Royal Quays to find eight, out of 12, clients already there and looking forward to the day out in Northumberland’s deep offshore waters.  With everyone on board we set sail out of the Tyne in a fairly stiff…

  • Seawatching; Druridge Bay mini-safari 16/07/2015

    Thursday’s second mini-safari was around NEWT’s local patch of Druridge Bay and southeast Northumberland. I arrived at Church Point to collect Mike, and we started with a scan of the sea in search of White-beaked Dolphin.  It was a bit on the choppy side for observing cetaceans, but there was an obvious movement of seabirds…

  • Never mind the Balearics…

    …here’s the Bonxies. Watching the weather forecast during the week, and having a day on Holy Island on Thursday with Malcolm (trip report to come soon!), convinced me that there was somewhere I needed to be at dawn on Friday.  Arriving at Church Point in the half-light there were a few cars already parked, and…

  • Birdwatching in an iconic landscape; Lindisfarne 23/09/2013

    After two long hard days offshore (8hr pelagic on Saturday – blog post coming soon! – and 14hr offshore on Sunday for a North East Cetacean Project transect survey) today brought some light relief from the rolling swell of the North Sea as I headed north to Seahouses to collect Phil and Ann (who had…

  • Beauty in the ‘mundane’

    LBJ.  No, not the 36th President of the United States, but the acronym used by many birdwatchers to describe any relatively small, nondescript brown bird – ‘Little Brown Job’.  Over the last few years, a number of our clients have applied that term to two birds that I always think deserve closer attention… I collected…

  • Deep water; NEWT’s North Sea Pelagic 14/08/2013

    Probably my favourite pelagic of all of the North Sea pelagic trips that we run (although I enjoy all of them immensely!) is our 10hr Farne Deeps – Northumberland’s ‘Ultimate Pelagic’.  The forecast looked about as promising as it gets and I arrived at Royal Quays in good time, to discover that most of our…