{"id":1745,"date":"2012-08-08T11:24:20","date_gmt":"2012-08-08T10:24:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/?p=1745"},"modified":"2012-08-28T18:19:23","modified_gmt":"2012-08-28T17:19:23","slug":"the-darkening-gloom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/birdwatching\/the-darkening-gloom","title":{"rendered":"The darkening gloom"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Despite protestations from Sarah, I still think that you really can&#8217;t beat the evening when it comes to wildlife experiences.<\/p>\n<p>As the rain poured (and I really do mean poured) down on Sunday afternoon, I &#8216;phoned Peter to check that he was managing to make his way to Northumberland successfully for our evening mini-safari around <a href=\"http:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/tours.php?id=2\" target=\"_blank\">Druridge Bay<\/a> and southeast Northumberland.\u00a0 As I collected him at 6pm, the weather was improving and we headed to the coast.\u00a0 Our regular <em><strong>Little Owl<\/strong><\/em> was perched at the entrance to its nest hole, soaking up the warm rays of the evening sunshine, lazily turning its head to peer at us from above.\u00a0 An adult <em><strong>Mediterranean Gull<\/strong> <\/em>was a surprise find just south of Cresswell village and, as <em><strong>Gannets<\/strong> <\/em>soared offshore on those remarkably long thin wings, we headed to Cresswell Pond.\u00a0 All of the assembled <em><strong>Lapwings, Curlew, Golden Plover, Dunlin, Oystercatcher <\/strong><\/em>and<strong> <\/strong><em><strong>Avocets <\/strong><\/em>lifted in alarm as a<strong><\/strong><em><strong> Barn Ow<\/strong><\/em><em>l<\/em> passed by on its way to the dunes in search of <em><strong>voles<\/strong><\/em>.\u00a0 <em><strong>Willow Warblers<\/strong><\/em> were flycatching, <em><strong>Linnets<\/strong> <\/em>were looking shockingly red in the low sunlight and we continued on our way up the coast.\u00a0 Three more<em><strong> Barn Owls<\/strong><\/em> gave an impressive tally for an evening&#8217;s birdwatching and a female <em><strong>Marsh Harrier<\/strong><\/em> perched very obligingly on a fence post.\u00a0 The light was deteriorating and as we stood by a river, swollen by the heavy rain, a leap, a small splash and the top of its head racing across from one bank to the opposite was the one <em><strong>Otter<\/strong> <\/em>of the evening.\u00a0 A ferocious predator making its way into the darkening gloom.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Despite protestations from Sarah, I still think that you really can&#8217;t beat the evening when it comes to wildlife experiences. As the rain poured (and I really do mean poured) down on Sunday afternoon, I &#8216;phoned Peter to check that he was managing to make his way to Northumberland successfully for our evening mini-safari around [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,9,5,139],"tags":[40,97,172,288,185,175,123,140,72,397,193,837,210,213],"class_list":["post-1745","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-birdwatching","category-druridge","category-northumberland","category-southeast-northumberland","tag-avocet","tag-barn-owl","tag-curlew","tag-dunlin","tag-gannet","tag-golden-plover","tag-lapwing","tag-linnet","tag-little-owl","tag-marsh-harrier","tag-mediterranean-gull","tag-otter","tag-oystercatcher","tag-willow-warbler"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1745","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=1745"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1745\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1755,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1745\/revisions\/1755"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1745"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1745"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1745"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}