{"id":1041,"date":"2011-05-19T09:17:05","date_gmt":"2011-05-19T09:17:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/?p=1041"},"modified":"2011-05-19T09:17:05","modified_gmt":"2011-05-19T09:17:05","slug":"putting-in-the-effort","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/birdwatching\/putting-in-the-effort","title":{"rendered":"Putting in the effort"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Early afternoon on Tuesday I collected Julian and Andrew from their\u00a0accommodation at\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.theswanchoppington.co.uk\/\" target=\"_blank\">The Swan<\/a>\u00a0for an afternoon of birdwatching and general natural history in <a href=\"http:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/tours.php?id=2\" target=\"_blank\">Druridge Bay <\/a>and southeast Northumberland.\u00a0 After a busy\u00a0afternoon that produced sightings of <em><strong>Barn Owl <\/strong><\/em>(an incredibly obliging bird that we watched hunting for nearly 20minutes), 4 <em><strong>Brown Hares<\/strong><\/em> and a <em><strong>Temminck&#8217;s Stint<\/strong><\/em> amongst a myriad of other\u00a0birds, flowers and wildlife\u00a0we headed towards a small pond, dusk, destiny and a date with that elusive predator&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>With an 80% success rate searching for <em><strong>Otters <\/strong><\/em>since early\u00a0April\u00a0(in 4 trips with clients, one trip for the NEWT guides) I was fairly confident&#8230;then it got darker, and darker, and darker&#8230;and still no sign.\u00a0 A chance break in the clouds reflected in the water surface and visibility improved for a few moments.\u00a0 I&#8217;d been concentrating on a pair of the oft-derided <em><strong>Canada Geese<\/strong><\/em> for a few minutes, because they were standing very alert, when they began cackling.\u00a0 A quick scan along the water&#8217;s edge&#8230;and was that an <em><strong>otter<\/strong><\/em>, distantly in the gloom?\u00a0 or were my eyes playing those tricks that you often have in the last light of the day?\u00a0 As it surfaced again, before swimming right by, I reflected on the effort that we&#8217;d all been putting in, in the failing light, and the reward for that effort as it&#8217;s final act before vanishing into the darkness of a reedbed was to feed just a few metres away, with it&#8217;s tail waggling about above the water.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Early afternoon on Tuesday I collected Julian and Andrew from their\u00a0accommodation at\u00a0The Swan\u00a0for an afternoon of birdwatching and general natural history in Druridge Bay and southeast Northumberland.\u00a0 After a busy\u00a0afternoon that produced sightings of Barn Owl (an incredibly obliging bird that we watched hunting for nearly 20minutes), 4 Brown Hares and a Temminck&#8217;s Stint amongst [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,9,5,139],"tags":[97,57,837,473,231],"class_list":["post-1041","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-birdwatching","category-druridge","category-northumberland","category-southeast-northumberland","tag-barn-owl","tag-brown-hare","tag-otter","tag-temmincks-stint","tag-whimbrel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1041","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=1041"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1041\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1042,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1041\/revisions\/1042"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1041"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1041"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1041"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}