I had a few errands to run this morning so was pleased to see that the weather was fine with big fluffy white clouds against a deep blue sky. There was still a biting chill in the air though, so I put on my hat and gloves and set off to walk to Guidepost. Remarkably, in the middle of a housing estate, my ears latched on to the cascading song of a skylark. Reminiscent of my youth; when I hear that song then it takes me back to summer days spent just laying in meadows, listening to the sound and trying (often in vain) to locate the singer. This time, however, he couldn’t evade my gaze and I watched for a while as the tiny dark speck quivered against the clouds before finally descending. The volume and variety of birdsong is growing steadily as the days lengthen and new shoots and blooms are swelling and bursting. The snowdrops have now been joined by the yellow, white and purple of crocuses. Greenfinches are wheezing, goldfinches are twinkling (ok, I know that technically twinkling is visual rather than aural) and song thrushes are repeating themselves, and repeating themselves, and… \ud83d\ude42 The transition from winter to spring is quite a blurred one and I’ll be surprised if we’ve seen the last snow of this winter for example. Could this be my favourite time of the year? It’s certainly exciting, and I can barely wait for our first Kielder Safari on March 24th. Lingering winter visitors gathered in flocks prior to departure, raptors displaying and all those songbirds proclaiming their territories and seeking the approval of the opposite sex.<\/p>\n
And it will only get better…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I had a few errands to run this morning so was pleased to see that the weather was fine with big fluffy white clouds against a deep blue sky. There was still a biting chill in the air though, so I put on my hat and gloves and set off to walk to Guidepost. Remarkably, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-104","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104","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=104"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=104"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=104"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=104"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}