Yesterday morning didn’t seem too promising; grey, misty and raining when I got out of bed. However, as I headed up the A1 to collect 5 of the participants for our full-day Otter Safari, the clouds began to break and soon I was driving beneath a blue sky and bathed in warm sunshine. The journey south along the coast was made all the more enjoyable in the improving conditions and we collected our final participant from Amble. First stop was the River Blyth. With several dogs swimming in the river, otters were unlikely but everyone enjoyed excellent views of at least two Red Squirrels, Great Spotted Woodpecker, Treecreeper and Grey Wagtail. Jay and Nuthatch could both be heard calling but remained hidden from view. Out on to the coast and a stop for lunch at what I think is the best picnic spot in Northumberland. There’s still a good selection of wildfowl on the coastal pools and, as we headed north, Goldeneye, Red-breasted Merganser, Teal and Wigeon were all looking at their best. Wader numbers were much lower than they have been but Lapwing were crazily displaying over roadside fields and Turnstone, Oystercatcher, Redshank, Curlew and Knot were feeding around the pool edges. A single Whooper Swan was an unusual sight; perhaps it forgot to leave when all of the other Whoopers that have wintered around the Druridge area departed during March? A few Chiffchaffs were singing and a Greenshank was running along the edge of Cresswell Pond but, on the whole, we were mainly finding lingering winter visitors. Then that all changed as we watched probably the three best birds of the day; Little Egret, a pair of Garganey and a very obliging Marsh Harrier. The wind began to pick-up again and the water surface started to ruffle to the point where searching for otters became a real challenge. So that was Thursday, an otter safari that turned into an excellent Northumberland birdwatching tour. Good Friday will be a photography\/videography day (weather permitting) and then we have a Seal Safari on Easter Saturday, leaving Seahouses at 10:30.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Yesterday morning didn’t seem too promising; grey, misty and raining when I got out of bed. However, as I headed up the A1 to collect 5 of the participants for our full-day Otter Safari, the clouds began to break and soon I was driving beneath a blue sky and bathed in warm sunshine. The journey […]<\/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-115","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115","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=115"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=115"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=115"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=115"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}