Saturday’s Whale and Dolphin Cruise from Seahouses turned out to be an excellent few hours of birdwatching off the Northumberland coast.<\/p>\n
As we left the harbour, the swell of the tide had the boat rocking gently up and down.\u00a0 A mile or so later and we were in what I think of\u00a0 as ‘proper’ pelagic conditions; choppy sea, lots of whitecaps, an eerie wind whistling around the boat…and birds everywhere.\u00a0 The atmosphere when the North Sea is like that is filled with anticipation.\u00a0 A Pomarine Skua<\/em><\/strong>, athletic, muscular and menacing harrassed Kittiwakes<\/em><\/strong>, our first Great Skua<\/strong><\/em> of the trip (the first of several) lumbered by, Arctic Skuas<\/em><\/strong> flew along the wave troughs and the fragile, delicate figure of a Long-tailed Skua <\/em><\/strong>headed north in the rapidly strengthening wind.\u00a0 Fulmars<\/em><\/strong> soared effortlessly by, small groups of Gannets<\/em><\/strong>, those masters of efficient flight, featured throughout the trip and Sooty Shearwaters<\/em><\/strong>, a real seawatcher’s bird, entertained as they circled the boat.\u00a0 Added to that there were Puffins<\/strong><\/em>, Guillemots<\/strong><\/em>, Razorbills<\/strong><\/em>, Manx Shearwaters <\/strong><\/em>and Herring, Great Black-backed, Lesser Black-backed<\/em><\/strong> and Black-headed Gulls<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0 and Arctic, Common, Sandwich <\/em><\/strong>and Roseate Terns<\/em><\/strong>.\u00a0 With so many whitecaps, and some ‘interesting’ swell, we\u00a0weren’t fortunate enough\u00a0find any cetaceans, but one participant\u00a0summed up\u00a0offshore wildlife\u00a0so well “You’re on a boat, it’s an experience,\u00a0enjoy it, you never know what you’ll see.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Saturday’s Whale and Dolphin Cruise from Seahouses turned out to be an excellent few hours of birdwatching off the Northumberland coast. As we left the harbour, the swell of the tide had the boat rocking gently up and down.\u00a0 A mile or so later and we were in what I think of\u00a0 as ‘proper’ pelagic […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,105,5,141],"tags":[362,230,271,229,122,185,375,363,186,143,301,499,498,364,387,225,226,274,223,365],"class_list":["post-1313","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-birdwatching","category-north-sea","category-northumberland","category-northumberland-coast","tag-arctic-skua","tag-arctic-tern","tag-black-headed-gull","tag-common-tern","tag-fulmar","tag-gannet","tag-great-black-backed-gull","tag-great-skua","tag-guillemot","tag-herring-gull","tag-kittiwake","tag-lesser-black-backed-gull","tag-long-tailed-skua","tag-manx-shearwater","tag-pomarine-skua","tag-puffin","tag-razorbill","tag-roseate-tern","tag-sandwich-tern","tag-sooty-shearwater"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1313","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=1313"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1313\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1338,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1313\/revisions\/1338"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1313"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1313"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1313"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}