{"id":1715,"date":"2012-07-25T08:08:20","date_gmt":"2012-07-25T07:08:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/?p=1715"},"modified":"2012-07-25T08:08:20","modified_gmt":"2012-07-25T07:08:20","slug":"elusive-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/northumberland\/elusive-2","title":{"rendered":"Elusive"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>With our focus in late-July on the North Sea and its enigmatic wildlife, a land-based trip\u00a0makes a pleasant change from riding the waves.\u00a0 I collected Catherine, Mark, Jacob and Izzy from their holiday accommodation in Howick and we set off down the Northumberland coast towards <a href=\"http:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/tours.php?id=2\" target=\"_blank\">Druridge Bay<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>We started at Newbiggin, following up a recent report of a small pod of <em><strong>White-beaked Dolphins.<\/strong><\/em><strong> <\/strong>Only brief sightings of distant dorsal fins were possible, proving just what an elusive species this can be.\u00a0 An adult <em><strong>Mediterranean Gull<\/strong><\/em> drifted close\u00a0by with a few <em><strong>Black-headed Gulls<\/strong><\/em>, Jacob \u00a0concentrated on the flight identification of <em><strong>Common, Arctic <\/strong><\/em>and<strong> <\/strong><em><strong>Sandwich Terns,<\/strong><\/em> and another short spell of seawatching just up the coast produced lots of <em><strong>Eiders<\/strong><\/em>, and a <em><strong>Gannet<\/strong> <\/em>heading south.<\/p>\n<p>Cresswell Pond produced <em><strong>Little Gull, Black-tailed Godwit, Avocet, Curlew\u00a0<\/strong><\/em>and lots of<strong> <\/strong><em><strong>Lapwings,<\/strong><\/em><strong> <\/strong>and then a real star performer as a <em><strong>Barn Owl<\/strong><\/em> quartered the dunes.\u00a0 As is often the case, we\u00a0had a particular target species for the evening and, as <em><strong>Mallards<\/strong> <\/em>scattered from one section of a pond, and a small group of <em><strong>Teal<\/strong> <\/em>suddenly became very alert, we concentrated on scanning that area.\u00a0 Sure enough, the swishy, waving tail of an <em><strong>Otter<\/strong> <\/em>was soon spotted near the <em><strong>Teal<\/strong><\/em>, and for a few minutes it gave brief views of it&#8217;s tail, head and body as it spread panic throughout the assembled wildfowl.\u00a0 As darkness descended it vanished into the inky gloom and we headed back to the car, encountering <em><strong>Common Frog, Common Toad<\/strong><\/em><strong>\u00a0<\/strong>and<strong><em> Pipistrelles<\/em> <\/strong>on the way.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>With our focus in late-July on the North Sea and its enigmatic wildlife, a land-based trip\u00a0makes a pleasant change from riding the waves.\u00a0 I collected Catherine, Mark, Jacob and Izzy from their holiday accommodation in Howick and we set off down the Northumberland coast towards Druridge Bay. We started at Newbiggin, following up a recent [&hellip;]<\/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],"tags":[230,40,97,242,319,229,62,172,185,123,93,171,837,292,223,169,841],"class_list":["post-1715","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-druridge","category-northumberland","category-northumberland-coast","tag-arctic-tern","tag-avocet","tag-barn-owl","tag-black-tailed-godwit","tag-common-frog","tag-common-tern","tag-common-toad","tag-curlew","tag-gannet","tag-lapwing","tag-little-gull","tag-mallard","tag-otter","tag-pipistrelle","tag-sandwich-tern","tag-teal","tag-white-beaked-dolphin"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1715","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=1715"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1715\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1716,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1715\/revisions\/1716"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1715"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1715"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1715"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}