After another day on Holy Island on Sunday (carrying out some contract survey work), I collected Jakob and Nancy from Royal Quays early on Monday for a day of birdwatching around the NEWT ‘local patch’; southeast Northumberland and Druridge Bay.<\/p>\n
We started with Mediterranean Gulls<\/strong><\/em> at Newbiggin.\u00a0 Gulls may not be everyone’s bird of choice, but I defy anyone to tell me that adult Med Gulls aren’t stunningly beautiful \ud83d\ude42\u00a0 Sanderling<\/strong><\/em>, Redshank<\/strong><\/em>, Oystercatcher,<\/strong><\/em> Turnstone<\/strong><\/em> and Pied Wagtail<\/strong><\/em> were picking along the tideline as we watched the meds and we left them behind to continue our journey up the coast. Seawatching produced Guillemots<\/strong><\/em>, Razorbills<\/strong><\/em>, several Red-throated Divers<\/strong><\/em>, Fulmars<\/em><\/strong> using the breeze to soar incredibly close to the cliffsides and a possible ‘Northern’ Eider<\/strong><\/em> drifting south among the Common Eiders<\/strong><\/em>.\u00a0 A Peregrine <\/em><\/strong>made its way south with those powerful, menacing wingbeats, Rock Pipits<\/strong><\/em> in small flocks danced about on the wind, and we left the sea (although not too far away!) and continued our journey.\u00a0 Geese, which have characterised so much of our birding this winter are still around and we managed Greylag<\/strong><\/em>, Pink-footed<\/strong><\/em>, Canada<\/strong><\/em>, Barnacle<\/strong><\/em>, Taiga Bean<\/strong><\/em> and Eurasian White-fronted.\u00a0 <\/strong><\/em><\/strong>Goldeneyes<\/strong><\/em> are still around in good numbers, Teal<\/strong><\/em>, Shoveler<\/strong><\/em>, Gadwall<\/strong><\/em>, Wigeon<\/strong><\/em>, Red-breasted Merganser<\/strong><\/em> and Mallard<\/strong><\/em> were all resplendent (as most ducks tend to be in the late winter)\u00a0and 2 Common Snipe<\/strong><\/em> circled several times before deciding that the pond wasn’t to their liking and heading off again.<\/p>\n I returned Jakob and Nancy to the ferry terminal for their return journey to the Netherlands, and made the slightly shorter journey back to Scotland Gate myself.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" After another day on Holy Island on Sunday (carrying out some contract survey work), I collected Jakob and Nancy from Royal Quays early on Monday for a day of birdwatching around the NEWT ‘local patch’; southeast Northumberland and Druridge Bay. We started with Mediterranean Gulls at Newbiggin.\u00a0 Gulls may not be everyone’s bird of choice, […]<\/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],"tags":[391,526,506,221,373,520,122,170,168,505,186,171,193,535,55,536,392,226,188,69,358,224,142,80,269,191,537,169,359,525,181],"class_list":["post-1482","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-birdwatching","category-druridge","category-northumberland","tag-barnacle-geese","tag-bean-geese","tag-canada-geese","tag-common-eider","tag-common-snipe","tag-eurasian-white-fronted-geese","tag-fulmar","tag-gadwall","tag-goldeneye","tag-greylag-geese","tag-guillemot","tag-mallard","tag-mediterranean-gull","tag-northern-eider","tag-peregrine","tag-pied-wagtail","tag-pink-footed-geese","tag-razorbill","tag-red-breasted-merganser","tag-red-throated-diver","tag-redshank","tag-ringed-plover","tag-rock-pipit","tag-sanderling","tag-shoveler","tag-skylark","tag-taiga-bean-goose","tag-teal","tag-turnstone","tag-white-fronted-geese","tag-wigeon"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1482","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=1482"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1482\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1483,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1482\/revisions\/1483"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1482"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1482"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1482"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}