{"id":1104,"date":"2011-06-17T15:03:02","date_gmt":"2011-06-17T15:03:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/?p=1104"},"modified":"2011-06-17T11:25:03","modified_gmt":"2011-06-17T11:25:03","slug":"an-eventful-evening","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/birdwatching\/an-eventful-evening","title":{"rendered":"An eventful evening"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Thursday was my 3rd consecutive late finish.<\/p>\n<p>Before setting off\u00a0for a\u00a0&#8216;<em><strong>Red<\/strong> <strong>Squirrel <\/strong><\/em>and <em><strong>Badger <\/strong><\/em>Safari&#8217; I had a few admin things to get done including\u00a0some more planning for the Birdwatching Northumberland stand at this year&#8217;s British Bird Fair (I&#8217;ve got 2 lecture slots at the Bird Fair this year!).<\/p>\n<p>After collecting our picnic from <a href=\"http:\/\/www.theswanchoppington.co.uk\/\" target=\"_blank\">The Swan<\/a>, I headed to Church Point to collect Vince and Karin for their second safari day this week.\u00a0 Some unexpected birdwatching highlights included a <em><strong>Little Tern<\/strong><\/em> and a <strong><em>Cuckoo<\/em><\/strong>.\u00a0 A group of <em><strong>Tufted Ducks<\/strong><\/em> staring at a reedbed, and a clearly annoyed <em><strong>Mute Swan<\/strong><\/em> staring at the same reedbed and hissing, suggested that we were close to an <strong><em>Otter<\/em><\/strong> but in the blazing sunshine it stayed in the shade of the reeds and out of sight.<\/p>\n<p>The first of the day&#8217;s targets was achieved with possibly the reddest <em><strong>Red Squirrel<\/strong><\/em> I&#8217;ve ever seen, simply stunning as it ran along the sun-dappled canopy, and then it was time to position ourselves close to our favourite <em><strong>Badger<\/strong><\/em> sett.\u00a0 Would the badgers come close?\u00a0 would they only appear when it was too dark to really appreciate what magnificent animals they are? all worries were eased when, in broad daylight, our first <strong><em>Badger<\/em><\/strong> of the evening came trotting along only 5m away,\u00a0apparently oblivious to our presence.\u00a0 Another\u00a03 <em><strong>Badgers<\/strong><\/em> followed, as well as 3 <em><strong>Red Foxes<\/strong><\/em>, and <strong><em>Tawny Owls<\/em><\/strong> were calling from the trees around us.<\/p>\n<p>Of all of our tours, our evening mammal trips perhaps have the greatest unpredictability and the most remarkable &#8216;atmosphere&#8217; of them all.\u00a0 It&#8217;s still my favourite time of the day \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Thursday was my 3rd consecutive late finish. Before setting off\u00a0for a\u00a0&#8216;Red Squirrel and Badger Safari&#8217; I had a few admin things to get done including\u00a0some more planning for the Birdwatching Northumberland stand at this year&#8217;s British Bird Fair (I&#8217;ve got 2 lecture slots at the Bird Fair this year!). After collecting our picnic from The [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[287,3,9,5,114,19,139],"tags":[286,52,49,476,837,847,833,78],"class_list":["post-1104","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-badger-wildlife","category-birdwatching","category-druridge","category-northumberland","category-red-fox","category-red-squirrel","category-southeast-northumberland","tag-badger","tag-birdwatching-northumberland","tag-british-birdwatching-fair","tag-little-tern","tag-otter","tag-red-fox","tag-red-squirrel","tag-tawny-owl"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1104","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=1104"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1104\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1105,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1104\/revisions\/1105"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1104"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1104"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1104"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}