{"id":1811,"date":"2012-10-31T12:42:35","date_gmt":"2012-10-31T11:42:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/?p=1811"},"modified":"2012-10-31T12:42:35","modified_gmt":"2012-10-31T11:42:35","slug":"hide-and-seek","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/birdwatching\/hide-and-seek","title":{"rendered":"Hide and seek"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sunday was a Prestige Otter Safari<\/a> for Chris and Sophie.\u00a0 It was Chris’ birthday and, as I collected them from Berwick in some pretty horrible conditions, I was hoping that we would drive south into better weather.\u00a0 Sure enough, we did pass out from under the rain clouds, but the day stayed quite gloomy and windy.\u00a0 I’d already had an excellent start to the day’s birdwatching, with a flock of 14 Waxwings<\/strong> <\/em>flying alongside the road as I approached Berwick.\u00a0 I’m often asked what my favourite bird is, and usually reply that it’s impossible to have a favourite…but Waxwings<\/strong> <\/em>have a special place at the top of my list \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n

Down in southeast Northumberland we found an adult Mediterranean Gull<\/strong><\/em>, and Chris proved to be remarkably eagle-eyed – picking out a sleeping Jack Snipe<\/strong><\/em> in an area of cut reeds.\u00a0 On the water the usual suspects (Mallard, Teal, Wigeon, Tufted Duck, Shoveler, Gadwal<\/strong><\/em>l<\/em>) were joined by some less regular species; Scaup, Pintail<\/strong><\/em> and a pair of Long-tailed Ducks<\/strong><\/em>.<\/strong><\/em> <\/strong>Some surprising entertainment was provided by a Merlin <\/strong><\/em>which spent several minutes harassing a Magpie,<\/strong> and then there was a sudden movement of Goldeneye, Coot <\/strong><\/em>and <\/strong>Moorhen<\/strong><\/em> away from a reedbed.\u00a0 They stared intently at the reeds for a few minutes before drifting back towards the edge, then repeated the whole process twice more!\u00a0 There was something in the reeds that was causing concern, but it didn’t reveal itself (not an unusual occurrence in strong winds – and who could blame anything for staying sheltered?).\u00a0 We moved on to another pool…and had a repeat performance, this time with Pochard, Goldeneye, Teal, Tufted Duck <\/strong><\/em>and <\/strong>Whooper Swan<\/strong><\/em> being a bit on edge.\u00a0 Sometimes wildlife can be frustrating…<\/p>\n

Given the low temperatures and high wind, it seemed a little over-optimistic to get the bat detector out.\u00a0 However, just to confirm that you can’t ever predict wildlife, we had at least two or three Common Pipistrelles<\/strong><\/em>, including some frenzied feeding activity around a streetlight, before heading back up the coast.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sunday was a Prestige Otter Safari for Chris and Sophie.\u00a0 It was Chris’ birthday and, as I collected them from Berwick in some pretty horrible conditions, I was hoping that we would drive south into better weather.\u00a0 Sure enough, we did pass out from under the rain clouds, but the day stayed quite gloomy and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,9,5,141,139],"tags":[250,270,170,562,68,47,171,198,179,420,318,269,169,182,180,130,181],"class_list":["post-1811","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-birdwatching","category-druridge","category-northumberland","category-northumberland-coast","category-southeast-northumberland","tag-common-pipistrelle","tag-coot","tag-gadwall","tag-jack-snipe","tag-long-tailed-duck","tag-magpie","tag-mallard","tag-moorhen","tag-pintail","tag-pochard","tag-scaup","tag-shoveler","tag-teal","tag-tufted-duck","tag-waxwing","tag-whooper-swan","tag-wigeon"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1811","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=1811"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1811\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1812,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1811\/revisions\/1812"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1811"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1811"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1811"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}