{"id":1346,"date":"2011-10-13T06:51:12","date_gmt":"2011-10-13T06:51:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/?p=1346"},"modified":"2011-10-13T06:51:12","modified_gmt":"2011-10-13T06:51:12","slug":"stranded","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/birdwatching\/stranded","title":{"rendered":"Stranded"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I love Holy Island, but it can be a bit crowded sometimes&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>I collected Mike and Maggie from <a href=\"http:\/\/www.stcuthbertshouse.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">St Cuthbert&#8217;s House<\/a> on Tuesday morning and we began birdwatching our way north.\u00a0 In the shadow of Bamburgh Castle we watched <em><strong>Bar-tailed Godwits<\/strong><\/em>, <em><strong>Knot<\/strong><\/em>, <em><strong>Turnstones<\/strong><\/em>, <em><strong>Purple Sandpipers<\/strong><\/em>, <em><strong>Eider<\/strong><\/em> and <em><strong>Gannets<\/strong><\/em> in a bitingly cold northwesterly wind.\u00a0 We crossed onto Holy Island just before the rising tide covered the causeway&#8230;and found that the car park was empty!\u00a0 For the next 5 hours we practically had the island to ourselves, and enjoyed swirling flocks of <em><strong>Knot<\/strong><\/em> and <em><strong>Bar-tailed Godwit<\/strong><\/em>, <em><strong>Oystercatchers<\/strong><\/em>, <em><strong>Shags<\/strong><\/em>, <em><strong>Gannets<\/strong><\/em> plunge-diving, <em><strong>Red-breasted\u00a0Mergansers<\/strong><\/em>,\u00a0\u00a0<em><strong>Grey Seals<\/strong><\/em>, <em><strong>Fieldfares<\/strong><\/em>, <em><strong>Redwings<\/strong><\/em>, <em><strong>Curlew<\/strong><\/em>, <em><strong>Teal<\/strong><\/em>, <em><strong>Black-tailed Godwits<\/strong><\/em>, <em><strong>Grey Plover<\/strong><\/em>, <em><strong>Kestrels<\/strong><\/em>, <em><strong>Peregrine<\/strong><\/em> and then, as the tide began to recede, flocks of <em><strong>Pink-footed Geese<\/strong><\/em> and <em><strong>Pale-bellied Brent Geese<\/strong><\/em> took to the air, heading for the newly exposed mud and the feast it brings.<\/p>\n<p>Deliberately stranding yourself on Holy Island always carries risks as a birdwatcher; what if something really good turns up on the mainland? As an experience with clients though, particularly when one of them is a very keen wildlife and landscape photographer, it really is something special.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I love Holy Island, but it can be a bit crowded sometimes&#8230; I collected Mike and Maggie from St Cuthbert&#8217;s House on Tuesday morning and we began birdwatching our way north.\u00a0 In the shadow of Bamburgh Castle we watched Bar-tailed Godwits, Knot, Turnstones, Purple Sandpipers, Eider and Gannets in a bitingly cold northwesterly wind.\u00a0 We [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[109,3,119,5],"tags":[147,823,242,172,149,23,185,400,128,334,825,210,401,55,392,176,188,169],"class_list":["post-1346","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bamburgh-castle","category-birdwatching","category-holy-island","category-northumberland","tag-bar-tailed-godwit","tag-birdwatching","tag-black-tailed-godwit","tag-curlew","tag-eider","tag-fieldfare","tag-gannet","tag-grey-plover","tag-kestrel","tag-knot","tag-northumberland","tag-oystercatcher","tag-pale-bellied-brent-geese","tag-peregrine","tag-pink-footed-geese","tag-purple-sandpiper","tag-red-breasted-merganser","tag-teal"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1346","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=1346"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1346\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1354,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1346\/revisions\/1354"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1346"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1346"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1346"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}