Today didn’t look promising from a wildlife-watching point of view. This morning I was chairing a meeting of the South East Northumberland Tourism Association, followed by lunch and some admin work back in the office and then straight out to a school governor’s meeting. However, leaving school after the meeting, I was chatting with one of the other governors, and enjoying the warm, sunny afternoon…then I noticed four birds in a tree opposite. The distinctive silhouette with the spiky crest could mean only one thing – Waxwings. Maybe it’s because they look so exotic, maybe it’s because they inhabit northern forests (if I ever leave Northumberland then Scandinavia is very, very close to the top of the list of possible destinations) or maybe it’s because I saw my first Waxwings nearly 40 years ago and the shock of that first encounter has never left me. Whatever it is, they always bring excitement and there they were – sitting in an isolated bare tree in a housing estate close to home. They’ll all be gone soon, back across the North Sea for another breeding season, so keep your eyes peeled; any berry-laden trees or shrubs could be providing the fuel for their migration. Supermarket car parks and modern housing estates; prime locations for top-class birding.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Today didn’t look promising from a wildlife-watching point of view. This morning I was chairing a meeting of the South East Northumberland Tourism Association, followed by lunch and some admin work back in the office and then straight out to a school governor’s meeting. However, leaving school after the meeting, I was chatting with one […]<\/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-113","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113","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=113"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=113"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=113"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=113"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}