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Spring arrivals; Druridge Bay Safari 30/04/2015
It’s been a cold windy spring, and a few of our summer visitors seemed a bit tardy; we found our first Sand Martin and Chiffchaff later than we would have expected, but the day has been coming when things would start to happen… I collected Jan and Peter from Church Point and we set out…
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Watching; Bespoke Safari 25/04/2014
The first part of the Bank Holiday weekend was a washout, with our scheduled Dark Skies event, for a Hen Party in Kielder, falling victim to the weather 🙁 Sunday was a bespoke wildlife Safari for Claire and Sophie and, as I collected them from home in Gosforth, things were looking a bit more promising. …
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Seabird Spectacular 10-13 June 2013; birdwatching on the Northumberland coast
Arriving at The Swan on Monday evening I met up with Ronnie and Liz at the start of our Seabird Spectacular holiday. Of all of our holidays, this is the one that concentrates on the really outstanding wildlife available on the Northumberland coast in the summer. Tuesday started out very nice, although cloud cover was…
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Otter Watching 02/06/13 – Patience pays off
Just a couple of days before the end of 2008, I led an Otter Safari that produced prolonged sightings of our target species…just 5 seconds after arriving at the first site I’d planned to visit that day! That produced a complication all of it’s own – how do you keep a family with a young…
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Otter Watching 01/06/2013
Single-species trips can be some of the most stressful experiences for NEWT, although possibly not quite so stressful for our clients 🙂 Some species that our clients want to see can be very straightforward, like Grey Seals or Puffins (at least if you come at the right time of year!), others can be more difficult,…
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Performer
There are times when we’re out with clients and encounter a species that’s really unexpected, other times a bird or animal will do something really impressive and sometimes, just sometimes, it’s the often overlooked ‘little brown jobs’ that are the stars of the show. I collected Stephen from home in North Shields and headed north…
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Nature’s bounty
After a day in the North Pennines, I had an hour at home before setting out for an evening mini-safari around Druridge Bay. I couldn’t have anticipated that the evening would bring one of the most astonishing things I’ve seen… I collected Fiona and Damien from Morpeth and then headed north east to Amble to…
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Change of plan
Snow on Monday, glorious weather on Tuesday…and torrential rain on Wednesday 🙁 When I arrived to collect David and Janet for their Prestige Tour in the Cheviot Valleys we quickly decided to head towards the Northumberland coast instead as that would offer the chance of plenty of birdwatching with the prospect of being able to…