My own highlight of many trips involves those ‘nature red in tooth and claw’ moments, and they come in many guises…<\/p>\n
A Chiffchaff<\/strong><\/em> was singing as I collected Alec and Margaret from Waren Mill and we headed south down the coast toward Druridge Bay<\/a>\u00a0with a day of birdwatching ahead of us.\u00a0 In quite stunning weather we enjoyed fields of Curlew<\/strong><\/em>, rafts of Puffins<\/strong><\/em> on the sea, and clouds of them swirling over Coquet Island,\u00a0Fulmars<\/strong><\/em> shearing along the cliff-tops, plenty of wildfowl, including a red-head Smew<\/strong><\/em> – thanks Gill \ud83d\ude42 – and Bean<\/strong><\/em>, Canada<\/strong><\/em>, White-fronted<\/strong><\/em>, Greylag<\/strong><\/em> and Pink-footed<\/strong><\/em> Geese<\/strong><\/em> and 2 Short-eared Owls<\/strong><\/em>. It’s always a pleasure to take out clients who really appreciate Northumberland, and even more so when it’s their first visit to our beautiful county and they’ve already vowed to return regularly.<\/p>\n One of those special moments was provided by a bird once described by a good birding friend as “Annoying.\u00a0 They never stop singing, they’re really, really\u00a0annoying”.\u00a0 The object of his ire?\u00a0 None other than the humble Skylark<\/strong><\/em>.\u00a0 I have to say that I don’t find them annoying at all.\u00a0 I’ve hidden in rocky crags, monitoring Hen Harrier<\/strong><\/em> nest sites, with Skylarks<\/strong><\/em> singing directly overhead, I’ve walked around Holy Island in the summer with several birds singing from so high that they were just dots in the sky and I’ve marvelled at their song as it carries on the breeze.\u00a0 One thing\u00a0we saw on\u00a0Thursday was the thing that Chris found particularly annoying; as we drove from Cresswell towards Druridge Pools, we stopped to check the roadside fields\u00a0 and several Skylarks<\/strong><\/em> were singing nearby.\u00a0 Suddenly, one of the birds was zig-zagging as it tried to avoid the unwelcome attention of a Merlin.\u00a0 <\/strong><\/em>As the falcon chased close on\u00a0it’s tail, the Skylark<\/strong><\/em> continued singing.\u00a0 It might seem a strange thing to do, but it has been shown<\/a> that Merlins<\/strong><\/em> chase non-singing, or poorly singing, Skylarks<\/strong><\/em> for longer periods than they chase Skylarks<\/strong><\/em> that sing well and they’re more likely to catch non-singing Skylarks.\u00a0 <\/strong><\/em>As the birds rose higher and out of sight, we didn’t see the outcome of the chase, but the experience of watching a small bird filled with bravado as a predator closes in on it was one of those moments…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" My own highlight of many trips involves those ‘nature red in tooth and claw’ moments, and they come in many guises… A Chiffchaff was singing as I collected Alec and Margaret from Waren Mill and we headed south down the coast toward Druridge Bay\u00a0with a day of birdwatching ahead of us.\u00a0 In quite stunning weather […]<\/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":[526,506,268,172,122,505,56,392,225,456,191,538,525],"class_list":["post-1494","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-birdwatching","category-druridge","category-northumberland","tag-bean-geese","tag-canada-geese","tag-chiffchaff","tag-curlew","tag-fulmar","tag-greylag-geese","tag-merlin","tag-pink-footed-geese","tag-puffin","tag-short-eared-owl","tag-skylark","tag-smew","tag-white-fronted-geese"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1494","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=1494"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1494\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1495,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1494\/revisions\/1495"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1494"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1494"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1494"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}