{"id":1318,"date":"2011-09-15T07:17:35","date_gmt":"2011-09-15T07:17:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/?p=1318"},"modified":"2011-09-15T07:18:40","modified_gmt":"2011-09-15T07:18:40","slug":"call-of-the-wild","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/birdwatching\/call-of-the-wild","title":{"rendered":"Call of the wild"},"content":{"rendered":"

Yesterday was the second of four Druridge Bay<\/a>\/Southeast Northumberland afternoon and evening trips this week, and I collected Natalie and Clive from Newton on the Moor just after lunch before heading south.<\/p>\n

Starting with a short woodland walk, we enjoyed close views of those arboreal specialists Treecreeper<\/strong><\/em>, Nuthatch<\/strong><\/em> and Great Spotted Woodpecker<\/strong><\/em>, but this time Red Squirrel<\/em><\/strong> eluded us.<\/p>\n

At East Chevington, we were watching a roosting flock of Lapwing<\/strong><\/em>, Ruff<\/strong><\/em> and Curlew<\/strong><\/em>, and checking through the mass of assembled ducks, when a distant call caught my attention.\u00a0 It was a minute or two\u00a0before the birds appeared high in the sky to the north, but there they were; 29 Pink-footed Geese<\/em><\/strong>, the arrival that for me always heralds the end of the summer.<\/p>\n

A flock of Dunlin<\/strong><\/em>, Redshank<\/strong><\/em> and Curlew<\/strong><\/em> at Cresswell contained a Little Stint<\/strong><\/em>, and a brief seawatch\u00a0produced a small flock of Kn<\/em>ot <\/em><\/strong>heading north.<\/p>\n

A patient wait as the orange glow of the sunset illuminated the surface of a pond brought rewards as our attention was drawn to a scattering flock of Coot<\/strong><\/em>.\u00a0 Just a few metres from the ripples left by the rapidly departing birds, the menacing shape of an Otter<\/em><\/strong> was twisting, turning and diving.\u00a0 As it vanished in to the dark shadows of a reedbed, the\u00a0final indication of it’s presence were the bright trails left by Mallards<\/strong><\/em> and Little\u00a0Grebes <\/strong><\/em>as they made a frantic effort to be anywhere other than where the Otter <\/strong><\/em>was.\u00a0 Even more exciting for me, was the completely unexpected appearance of a mammal that I haven’t seen since childhood, as the twilight was punctuated by a loud ‘plop’ and a Water Vole<\/em><\/strong> swam cross in front of us \ud83d\ude42 Tawny Owls<\/strong><\/em> were calling and Common Pipistrelles<\/strong><\/em> flitted back and forth as the full moon, and cold wind, made the evening feel really autumnal.<\/p>\n

I dropped Natalie and Clive back at Newton on the Moor, and decided to avoid the roadworks on\u00a0the A1 on the route home and instead took the minor road from\u00a0Shilbottle to Warkworth.\u00a0 I was still delayed though, but by a young Badger<\/strong><\/em> that trotted along the middle of the road ahead of me for a quarter of a mile before wandering into the verge and watching as I passed by.\u00a0 Expect the unexpected…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yesterday was the second of four Druridge Bay\/Southeast Northumberland afternoon and evening trips this week, and I collected Natalie and Clive from Newton on the Moor just after lunch before heading south. Starting with a short woodland walk, we enjoyed close views of those arboreal specialists Treecreeper, Nuthatch and Great Spotted Woodpecker, but this time […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[287,3,9,5,21,139,503],"tags":[286,250,172,288,25,334,360,386,171,300,837,392,358,241,78,338,857],"class_list":["post-1318","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-badger-wildlife","category-birdwatching","category-druridge","category-northumberland","category-otter","category-southeast-northumberland","category-water-vole","tag-badger","tag-common-pipistrelle","tag-curlew","tag-dunlin","tag-great-spotted-woodpecker","tag-knot","tag-little-grebe","tag-little-stint","tag-mallard","tag-nuthatch","tag-otter","tag-pink-footed-geese","tag-redshank","tag-ruff","tag-tawny-owl","tag-treecreeper","tag-water-vole"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1318","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=1318"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1318\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1320,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1318\/revisions\/1320"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1318"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1318"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1318"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}