{"id":1011,"date":"2011-04-29T06:38:19","date_gmt":"2011-04-29T06:38:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/?p=1011"},"modified":"2011-04-29T06:38:19","modified_gmt":"2011-04-29T06:38:19","slug":"crossing-the-border","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/birdwatching\/crossing-the-border","title":{"rendered":"Crossing the border"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Along the edge of a precipitous bank in Kielder Forest, with a narrow stream below us, the &#8220;<em>chip<\/em>, <em>chip<\/em>&#8221; calls from the summit of the trees above prompt everyone to crane their necks.\u00a0 Then the calls are coming from below and the source of the sound is down at the stream, hidden below an undercut bank.\u00a0\u00a0A moment of magic as the birds pause at eye-level on the stream to treetop elevator; just a few feet away, illuminated\u00a0in a spot of dappled light, the outrageously bright slash of red and black of a male <strong><em>Common<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0<em><strong>Crossbill<\/strong><\/em> with his family.<\/p>\n<p>2 hours later we&#8217;re in a secluded valley and, as we enjoy our lunch, overhead is the unmistakeable shape of a male <em><strong>Hen Harrier<\/strong><\/em>.\u00a0 The &#8216;dove-coloured falcon&#8217; or\u00a0&#8216;blue hawk&#8217; (to list just\u00a0two of it&#8217;s local names) soars above us.\u00a0 Surely the most beautiful and captivating of our raptors and still heavily, and illegally,\u00a0persecuted, we&#8217;re privileged to witness that beauty and his effortless ascent against the clear blue sky.<\/p>\n<p>One day, 2 different habitats, 2 very different birds, 2 birdwatching gems, 2 indelible memories&#8230;.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Along the edge of a precipitous bank in Kielder Forest, with a narrow stream below us, the &#8220;chip, chip&#8221; calls from the summit of the trees above prompt everyone to crane their necks.\u00a0 Then the calls are coming from below and the source of the sound is down at the stream, hidden below an undercut [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,15,5],"tags":[165,839],"class_list":["post-1011","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-birdwatching","category-kielder","category-northumberland","tag-common-crossbill","tag-hen-harrier"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1011","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1011"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1011\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1012,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1011\/revisions\/1012"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1011"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1011"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1011"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}