As I collected Jason and Jane for a bespoke day of birdwatching in the beautiful Cheviot valleys, the first few raindrops pattered against the windscreeen of the car.\u00a0 As we headed south from Melkington the rain stopped and visibility improved, so I was sure were in for an excellent day.<\/p>\n
The day featured all of the species we would expect; Roe Deer, Brown Hare, Raven,<\/strong> Dipper,Grey Wagtail, Common Sandpiper, Tree Pipit, Redstart <\/strong><\/em>and\u00a0Red Grouse<\/strong><\/em> amongst many but a few of the regulars put on a really special performance.<\/p>\n Cuckoos <\/em><\/strong>were calling along the valley but frustratingly staying out of view, until a handsome male flew across the track ahead of us and then perched in full view.\u00a0 A pair of Whinchat<\/strong><\/em> provided another highlight as they flitted along a stream, dashing from rock to rock like Grey Wagtails, <\/strong><\/em>tails flicking as they sallied across the adjacent hillside.<\/p>\n Soon after I collected them, Jason had mentioned that he’d never seen a Ring Ouzel<\/strong><\/em>.\u00a0 No pressure there, then \ud83d\ude09\u00a0 As we started our first walk of the day, I could hear a Ring Ouzel<\/strong><\/em> singing, and soon located him at the top of a distant tree.\u00a0 More followed, including a pair sitting together on a fence, but probably the best of the seven that we found was a singing male; high in a narrow gully his song reverberated beautifully off the surrounding rock carrying over a distance at which he was just a black speck through our binoculars, his song was as clear as if he was just along the hillside.\u00a0 As the wind and rain finally arrived, and we discussed sustainability and conservation (I really should write a book…), his song continued, although he shifted the side of the gully he was on to shelter from the rain.\u00a0 A remote valley exposed to the elements, a real mountain specialist putting on a performance for us, stimulating insightful thoughts from Jason and Jane…another memorable day at ‘the office’ \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" As I collected Jason and Jane for a bespoke day of birdwatching in the beautiful Cheviot valleys, the first few raindrops pattered against the windscreeen of the car.\u00a0 As we headed south from Melkington the rain stopped and visibility improved, so I was sure were in for an excellent day. The day featured all of […]<\/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":[57,214,264,257,256,457,208,259,263,66,258,262],"class_list":["post-1632","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-birdwatching","category-cheviot-valleys","category-northumberland","tag-brown-hare","tag-common-sandpiper","tag-cuckoo","tag-dipper","tag-grey-wagtail","tag-raven","tag-red-grouse","tag-redstart","tag-ring-ouzel","tag-roe-deer","tag-tree-pipit","tag-whinchat"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1632","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=1632"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1632\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1633,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1632\/revisions\/1633"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1632"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1632"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1632"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}