{"id":1703,"date":"2012-07-05T07:50:05","date_gmt":"2012-07-05T06:50:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/?p=1703"},"modified":"2012-07-05T07:50:05","modified_gmt":"2012-07-05T06:50:05","slug":"on-passage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/birdwatching\/on-passage","title":{"rendered":"On passage"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A second consecutive <a href=\"http:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/tours.php?id=2\" target=\"_blank\">Druridge Bay<\/a> mini-safari was our activity on Friday morning and I arrived at Church Point to meet Gavin, Mark, Cindy and Esther for morning&#8217;s birdwatching around the NEWT &#8216;local patch&#8217;.\u00a0 My main concern was how the previous afternoon&#8217;s torrential downpour would have affected ground conditions at the sites we visit.\u00a0 As it was, the ground wasn&#8217;t too wet and everywhere we went was easily accessible.<\/p>\n<p>Late June and early July is always a good time to start to search for passage waders, with the earliest returning adult birds often still in their breeding garb.\u00a0 Two <em><strong>Dunlin<\/strong><\/em>, still with solid black bellies, dropped in, a <em><strong>Common Sandpiper<\/strong><\/em> was sitting motionless, before setting off along the water&#8217;s edge with that characteristic bobbing motion and 5 <em><strong>Black-tailed Godwits<\/strong><\/em> flew low over the water before dropping out of sight in a dip in a nearby field.\u00a0 Two <em><strong>Avocets<\/strong><\/em><strong> <\/strong> arrived and at least 7 <em><strong>Little Gulls<\/strong><\/em> were roosting.\u00a0 As we continued up the coast a <em><strong>Marsh Harrier<\/strong><\/em> rose from, and dropped back in to, a reedbed, <em><strong>Great Crested Grebes<\/strong> <\/em>cruised around serenely and <em><strong>Common, Arctic <\/strong><\/em>and<strong> <\/strong><em><strong>Sandwich Terns<\/strong><\/em> were all splashing about as they bathed.\u00a0 Is there a better place than the southeast Northumberland coast at this time of the year?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A second consecutive Druridge Bay mini-safari was our activity on Friday morning and I arrived at Church Point to meet Gavin, Mark, Cindy and Esther for morning&#8217;s birdwatching around the NEWT &#8216;local patch&#8217;.\u00a0 My main concern was how the previous afternoon&#8217;s torrential downpour would have affected ground conditions at the sites we visit.\u00a0 As it [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,9,5],"tags":[230,40,242,214,229,288,488,93,397,223],"class_list":["post-1703","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-birdwatching","category-druridge","category-northumberland","tag-arctic-tern","tag-avocet","tag-black-tailed-godwit","tag-common-sandpiper","tag-common-tern","tag-dunlin","tag-great-crested-grebe","tag-little-gull","tag-marsh-harrier","tag-sandwich-tern"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1703","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=1703"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1703\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1704,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1703\/revisions\/1704"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1703"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1703"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1703"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}