{"id":1496,"date":"2012-03-26T14:59:46","date_gmt":"2012-03-26T14:59:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/?p=1496"},"modified":"2012-03-31T04:01:20","modified_gmt":"2012-03-31T04:01:20","slug":"springtime-in-the-hills","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/birdwatching\/springtime-in-the-hills","title":{"rendered":"Springtime in the hills"},"content":{"rendered":"

After a day on the coast, heading inland to Kielder<\/a>\u00a0seems other-worldly, but it always produces something memorable.<\/p>\n

In rather misty conditions I drove across to Otterburn Hall to collect Anne and Peter for a day of birdwatching around Kielder and the Border forests.\u00a0 As we travelled through the forest the temperature gauge on the car hit the heady heights of 7C!\u00a0 Common Buzzards<\/strong><\/em> were uncharacteristically obliging, remaining perched in the open, and Crossbills <\/em><\/strong>and Siskins<\/em><\/strong> were once again shining like jewels in the cloudy, gloomy edges of the forest.\u00a0 After Thursday’s Skylark\/Merlin<\/strong><\/em> encounter, Kielder provided another predator-prey experience.\u00a0 We’d been watching displaying Common Snipe<\/strong><\/em>, and listened to one singing from it’s perch on a tree stump in the middle of a clear-fell area.\u00a0 A Sparrowhawk<\/strong><\/em> soared into view, circling high over a nearby plantation, before switching to a much more direct flight mode…and chasing one of the displaying Snipe<\/strong><\/em>.\u00a0 As they vanished out of sight over a plantation the hawk was still in hot pursuit…and the eventual outcome wasn’t for our eyes.\u00a0 Anne spotted the only Red Squirrel<\/strong><\/em> of the day as we continued along our route out onto the ‘main’ road \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n

As we continued across the border and into a remote valley, we enjoyed our picnic lunch with Ravens<\/strong><\/em> and Common Buzzards<\/strong><\/em> soaring along the ridges high above us.\u00a0 A Dipper<\/strong><\/em> sat motionless on a mid-stream rock and a pair of Goosanders<\/strong><\/em> flew upstream into the head of the valley.\u00a0 I may be a cold-weather person, and I’m certainly an evening person…but Springtime in the hills has a magic all of it’s own, and I feel privileged sharing it with our clients.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

After a day on the coast, heading inland to Kielder\u00a0seems other-worldly, but it always produces something memorable. In rather misty conditions I drove across to Otterburn Hall to collect Anne and Peter for a day of birdwatching around Kielder and the Border forests.\u00a0 As we travelled through the forest the temperature gauge on the car […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,15,5],"tags":[148,165,373,257,378,457,833,131],"class_list":["post-1496","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-birdwatching","category-kielder","category-northumberland","tag-common-buzzard","tag-common-crossbill","tag-common-snipe","tag-dipper","tag-goosander","tag-raven","tag-red-squirrel","tag-sparrowhawk"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1496","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=1496"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1496\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1507,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1496\/revisions\/1507"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1496"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1496"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1496"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}