{"id":1567,"date":"2012-04-20T07:47:23","date_gmt":"2012-04-20T07:47:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/?p=1567"},"modified":"2012-04-20T07:47:23","modified_gmt":"2012-04-20T07:47:23","slug":"a-walk-in-the-park","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/birdwatching\/a-walk-in-the-park","title":{"rendered":"A walk in the park"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>There are days when the weather is so good that my resolve to stay in the office and get on with admin work gets stretched beyond breaking point&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Monday is my usual office day, but the afternoon looked promising and I soon found myself driving inland towards the Northumberland National Park.\u00a0 Knee surgery last December has given my legs a new lease of life, and the uphill bits (which I always find more interesting from a birdwatching perspective) of the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/tours.php?id=1\" target=\"_blank\">Cheviot valleys<\/a> are no longer tortuous.\u00a0\u00a0I only live 10 minutes\u00a0from the coast, so you may wonder why I would drive for an hour inland&#8230;but one moment of the afternoon summed up everything that is special about our remoter areas.<\/p>\n<p>Sitting on a boulder-strewn hillside I can hear a <em><strong>Ring Ouzel<\/strong><\/em> on the precipitous crag opposite me.\u00a0 Along the stream far beneath my perch, <em><strong>Grey Wagtails<\/strong><\/em> and <em><strong>Dippers<\/strong><\/em> are bobbing their way downstream, flitting from rock to rock.\u00a0 The complex song of a <em><strong>Skylark<\/strong><\/em> carries on the breeze, and <em><strong>Red Grouse<\/strong><\/em> cackle in the heather.\u00a0 There isn&#8217;t another human in sight, no sound of motor vehicles, nothing that breaks the natural soundscape of this vast amphitheatre.\u00a0 Then, black dots appear against the azure sky; two, no four, no wait,\u00a0six <em><strong>Common Buzzards<\/strong><\/em> soaring high overhead, then smaller dots, a pair of <em><strong>Kestrels<\/strong><\/em> and a pair of <em><strong>Peregrines.<\/strong><\/em> A <strong><em>Raven<\/em><\/strong> joins the swirling mass of raptors and, above them all, an <em><strong>Osprey<\/strong><\/em> drifting lazily north.\u00a0 I lay back against the hillside, and watch&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>There are days when the weather is so good that my resolve to stay in the office and get on with admin work gets stretched beyond breaking point&#8230; Monday is my usual office day, but the afternoon looked promising and I soon found myself driving inland towards the Northumberland National Park.\u00a0 Knee surgery last December [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,8,5],"tags":[148,257,256,128,532,202,55,457,263,191],"class_list":["post-1567","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-birdwatching","category-cheviot-valleys","category-northumberland","tag-common-buzzard","tag-dipper","tag-grey-wagtail","tag-kestrel","tag-northumberland-national-park","tag-osprey","tag-peregrine","tag-raven","tag-ring-ouzel","tag-skylark"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1567","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=1567"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1567\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1568,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1567\/revisions\/1568"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1567"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1567"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1567"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}