{"id":1348,"date":"2011-10-17T09:49:19","date_gmt":"2011-10-17T09:49:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/?p=1348"},"modified":"2011-10-17T09:49:19","modified_gmt":"2011-10-17T09:49:19","slug":"autumn-winds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/birdwatching\/autumn-winds","title":{"rendered":"Autumn winds"},"content":{"rendered":"

Thursday afternoon found me leading an afternoon of birdwatching, and searching for Otters around our local area; Druridge Bay<\/a> and southeast Northumberland.<\/p>\n

I collected Ruth and Margaret from the Swan at Choppington<\/a>\u00a0and we drove the short distance to Newbiggin to collect Mike and Maggie (for their second trip with us this week), Ben and Siobhan.\u00a0 A ghostly white Mediterranean Gull<\/strong><\/em> drifted by the car\u00a0before we headed north.\u00a0 The River Coquet<\/strong> produced one of my own favourite wildlife experiences as we watched Salmon<\/em><\/strong> leaping, and Cormorants<\/strong>, Grey Herons <\/strong><\/em>and Goosanders<\/em><\/strong> fishing.\u00a0 Lapwings, Redshank, Curlew<\/em><\/strong> and a Greenshank<\/em><\/strong> all flew by and, after enjoying our lunch by the river, we headed down the bay.\u00a0 East Chevington <\/strong>produced lots of Knot, Dunlin, Ruff, Lapwing, Curlew, Golden Plover, Pintail, Goldeneye, Tufted Duck, Pochard, Gadwall, Mallard, Teal <\/em><\/strong>and Wigeon<\/em><\/strong> and our next stop was Cresswell<\/strong>.\u00a0 Along the hedge leading down to the hide there were at least 8 Goldcrests<\/em><\/strong>, and from the hide there was another nice wader roost.\u00a0 As well as the species we’d already seen at East Chevington<\/strong> there was a single Black-tailed Godwit<\/em><\/strong>, plenty of Turnstone<\/em><\/strong> and 2 Purple Sandpipers<\/em><\/strong>.\u00a0 As the sun began falling towards the horizon, we settled into position to search for Otters<\/em><\/strong>.\u00a0 Flocks of Pink-footed Geese<\/em><\/strong> filled the sky to the north and a Daubenton’s Bat<\/em><\/strong> moved back and forth over the water.\u00a0<\/em><\/strong>All of the signs were there; ducks, Coots<\/em><\/strong> and Swans <\/em><\/strong>moving en masse from one spot to another, nervously moving back before reversing direction again and, successive groups of birds across the water exploding into the air in a state of panic.\u00a0 The only thing that didn’t happen, was the Otter<\/em><\/strong> coming out into view!\u00a0 Still, with a success rate of 75% on Otter Safaris<\/a> since mid-April, we’re always optimistic whenever we go in search of them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Thursday afternoon found me leading an afternoon of birdwatching, and searching for Otters around our local area; Druridge Bay and southeast Northumberland. I collected Ruth and Margaret from the Swan at Choppington\u00a0and we drove the short distance to Newbiggin to collect Mike and Maggie (for their second trip with us this week), Ben and Siobhan.\u00a0 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,9,5,139],"tags":[242,270,372,172,299,135,175,168,378,332,283,334,193,837,392,179,420,176,358,241,412,169,182,359,181],"class_list":["post-1348","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-birdwatching","category-druridge","category-northumberland","category-southeast-northumberland","tag-black-tailed-godwit","tag-coot","tag-cormorant","tag-curlew","tag-daubentons-bat","tag-goldcrest","tag-golden-plover","tag-goldeneye","tag-goosander","tag-greenshank","tag-grey-heron","tag-knot","tag-mediterranean-gull","tag-otter","tag-pink-footed-geese","tag-pintail","tag-pochard","tag-purple-sandpiper","tag-redshank","tag-ruff","tag-salmon","tag-teal","tag-tufted-duck","tag-turnstone","tag-wigeon"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1348","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=1348"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1348\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1349,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1348\/revisions\/1349"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1348"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1348"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1348"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}