{"id":1690,"date":"2012-06-28T17:52:33","date_gmt":"2012-06-28T16:52:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/?p=1690"},"modified":"2012-06-28T17:52:33","modified_gmt":"2012-06-28T16:52:33","slug":"spotting-the-otter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/northumberland\/spotting-the-otter","title":{"rendered":"Spotting the Otter"},"content":{"rendered":"

They’re the sort of words I always want hear at the start of a day out with clients “The sole reason for coming to Northumberland on this holiday was to see an Otter<\/strong><\/em><\/a>“.\u00a0 So, no pressure there, then…<\/p>\n

I collected Ann and Glyn from their b&b in Seahouses and we set out on an exploration of the best birdwatching and otter spotting locations on the Northumberland\u00a0coast around Druridge Bay<\/a>.\u00a0 Avocet<\/strong><\/em> <\/strong>and Whimbrel<\/strong><\/em> were among the birdwatching highlights of the afternoon then, as dusk approached, it looked as though everything was going to go wrong; wave after wave of torrential rain battered down so the surface of the pond looked as if it were boiling and columns of mist were drifting across our field of view.<\/p>\n

I was still confident though.\u00a0 The ducks, swans and other waterbirds were looking nervous, and that’s always a good sign.\u00a0 Then it happened, as Ann said “what’s that over there by the reeds?”,\u00a0 I got the end of the reedbed in view, steadied my binoculars, and an Otter<\/strong> <\/em>surfaced before swimming along, allowing all of us to get it in focus,\u00a0and vanishing into the reeds;\u00a0 Ann had managed to see her first wild Otter<\/strong> <\/em>and she’d found it herself \ud83d\ude42 As the rain cleared a Long-eared Owl<\/strong><\/em> flew straight toward us and the Otter<\/strong> <\/em>reappeared, this time trying to grab a Moorhen<\/strong> <\/em>that was perched half-way up the reeds.\u00a0 It twisted and turned, sleek and sinuous, and once again sought the cover of the vegetation at the water’s edge.\u00a0 As the waterfowl settled and began to look much less worried,\u00a0we left the hide and waded back to the car \ud83d\ude09<\/p>\n

I managed\u00a0a good bonus bird myself on the drive\u00a0back down the coast\u00a0as a Little Owl<\/strong><\/em> flew from a roadside fencepost.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

They’re the sort of words I always want hear at the start of a day out with clients “The sole reason for coming to Northumberland on this holiday was to see an Otter“.\u00a0 So, no pressure there, then… I collected Ann and Glyn from their b&b in Seahouses and we set out on an exploration […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,5,141,21],"tags":[40,72,174,837,231],"class_list":["post-1690","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-druridge","category-northumberland","category-northumberland-coast","category-otter","tag-avocet","tag-little-owl","tag-long-eared-owl","tag-otter","tag-whimbrel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1690","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=1690"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1690\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1696,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1690\/revisions\/1696"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1690"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1690"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1690"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}