After a planned break from days out with clients, and regular exercise and ice-pack treatment for my knee, we had a mini-Safari on Wednesday afternoon.\u00a0 Southeast Northumberland is our local patch, so I was getting back into the swing of things with something comfortingly familiar.<\/p>\n
I collected Alastair and Zoe from Church Point and we set out on an exploration of the River Wansbeck.\u00a0 Stunning Red-breasted Mergansers<\/strong><\/em> and Goldeneye<\/em><\/strong>, and subtly attractive Little Grebes<\/strong><\/em> (amazing how many people still think of them as Dabchicks<\/strong><\/em> – a far nicer name!),\u00a0 were diving along the edge of the river.\u00a0 A handsome drake Goosander<\/strong><\/em> flew upstream and the first of the afternoon’s 4 Sparrowhawks<\/strong><\/em> drifted high overhead.\u00a0 A flock of Long-tailed Tits<\/strong><\/em>, those noisy endearing pink and white fluffballs, made their way in procession from one side of the river to the other and\u00a0Mallards<\/strong><\/em> began dropping out of the sky and following each other through the\u00a0vegetation, quacking noisily.\u00a0 As daylight faded a flock of Teal<\/strong><\/em> drifted backwards and forwards between a reedbed and open water, roosting\u00a0Pheasants<\/em><\/strong> (my vote for most underrated bird in Britain) flushed from a Hawthorn hedge\u00a0as we made our way back to the car in the dark, and it was time to return Zoe and Alastair to Newbiggin.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" After a planned break from days out with clients, and regular exercise and ice-pack treatment for my knee, we had a mini-Safari on Wednesday afternoon.\u00a0 Southeast Northumberland is our local patch, so I was getting back into the swing of things with something comfortingly familiar. I collected Alastair and Zoe from Church Point and we […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,5,139],"tags":[168,378,128,121,188,131,169,182,181],"class_list":["post-1429","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-birdwatching","category-northumberland","category-southeast-northumberland","tag-goldeneye","tag-goosander","tag-kestrel","tag-long-tailed-tit","tag-red-breasted-merganser","tag-sparrowhawk","tag-teal","tag-tufted-duck","tag-wigeon"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1429","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=1429"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1429\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1431,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1429\/revisions\/1431"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1429"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1429"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1429"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}