{"id":1503,"date":"2012-03-29T06:45:57","date_gmt":"2012-03-29T06:45:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/?p=1503"},"modified":"2012-03-29T06:45:57","modified_gmt":"2012-03-29T06:45:57","slug":"nothing-to-grouse-about-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/birdwatching\/nothing-to-grouse-about-2","title":{"rendered":"Nothing to grouse about"},"content":{"rendered":"

On a beautiful spring day, with raptors soaring against an azure sky, and birdsong carrying on the breeze, just being in the landscape is\u00a0an experience.<\/p>\n

As I collected Peter and Margaret from Barnard Castle for a day of birdwatching around the North Pennines<\/a> AONB, the temperature gauge on the car hit 18C, and we set off in search of one species in particular.\u00a0 Our lunch stop, overlooking a Black Grouse<\/strong><\/em> lek site, was\u00a0accompanied by\u00a0Curlew<\/strong><\/em>, Common Snipe<\/strong><\/em>, Meadow Pipit<\/strong><\/em> and Golden Plover<\/strong><\/em> all singing.\u00a0 As we went deeper into the hills, a Black Grouse<\/strong><\/em> stared at us imperiously from a rushy field.\u00a0 As we enjoyed very close views of the handsome bird, two cyclists came along the road and he flushed…along with another 3 Blackcock.\u00a0 <\/strong><\/em>As Margaret kept a close eye on the birds as they landed and began making their way uphill, Curlew<\/em><\/strong> and Golden Plover<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0 landed nearby and began calling.\u00a0 Then Margaret found another 3 Blackcock,<\/strong><\/em> flying by and landing much closer, and watched them before asking “you saw where they landed, can you see them now?”.\u00a0 I couldn’t but, having watched exactly what they did, Margaret described where they were, and what they were doing.\u00a0 Incredibly, they were only a few metres from where they’d landed, but had managed to position themselves amongst the rushes and stopped moving so that, unless you happened to be watching them when they did that, you couldn’t see where they were.<\/p>\n

As the day continued and we headed across into Upper Teesdale, we found some very close\u00a0Black Grouse<\/strong><\/em>, Common Snipe<\/strong><\/em> drumming overhead, Wheatears<\/strong><\/em> flitting along dry stone walls, Red Grouse<\/strong><\/em> cackling in the heather, a Short-eared Owl <\/strong><\/em>quartering grassland in stunning late-afternoon light and 2 Hen Harriers<\/strong><\/em>.\u00a0 That last sighting was exciting, and\u00a0yet sobering\u00a0at the same time; it’s been a long time since they bred successfully in that vast area of prime habitat.<\/p>\n

Fittingly, our last sighting of the day was of 2 more Black Grouse<\/strong><\/em>, picking their way through sun-dappled woodland in the early evening.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On a beautiful spring day, with raptors soaring against an azure sky, and birdsong carrying on the breeze, just being in the landscape is\u00a0an experience. As I collected Peter and Margaret from Barnard Castle for a day of birdwatching around the North Pennines AONB, the temperature gauge on the car hit 18C, and we set […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,12,5],"tags":[54,148,373,172,175,839,453,208,456,235],"class_list":["post-1503","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-birdwatching","category-pennines","category-northumberland","tag-black-grouse","tag-common-buzzard","tag-common-snipe","tag-curlew","tag-golden-plover","tag-hen-harrier","tag-north-pennines-aonb","tag-red-grouse","tag-short-eared-owl","tag-wheatear"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1503","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=1503"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1503\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1505,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1503\/revisions\/1505"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1503"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1503"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1503"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}