I’ve long held the belief that the worst weather conditions for wildlife watching are strong cold winds. There is something worse though, although so unusual that we rarely have to worry about it…
I was out early yesterday morning, in what seemed to be ideal conditions. From the coast I could see what looked like low cloud massing on the eastern horizon though. By the time I was driving towards Alnwick to collect Jonathan and Katherine, that low cloud had arrived on the coast, and proved to be an incredibly dense sea fret. A Common Newt, in a state of torpor, had presumably been part way across the footpath when the fret, and it’s bone-chilling temperatures, arrived. We moved the newt out of harm’s way and began our search for Otters. Canada Geese, Greylag Geese, Mute Swans, Mallards and Tufted Duck were all splashing and alarming. There could have been a rampaging pack of Otters terrorising the waterfowl, but as visibility was less than 50m we couldn’t be sure what was causing all of the consternation 😉 A Little Egret shone briefly in the gloom before being enveloped by the next wave of cloud rolling in off the sea and, as we checked all of our regular sites visibility decreased, then improved briefly, then decreased again. A few miles inland it was glorious, but every coastal waterbody was under a thick cloud so, after lunch, we decided to cut the trip down to a mini-safari.
It was atmospheric…