As a chemist I’ve found fireworks fascinating for some time.\u00a0 While I was still teaching, I developed a series of demonstration experiments that illustrated how different colours are produced by varying the chemicals in the mix and managed, during one particularly spectacular demo, to set fire to a pile of homework and the surface of my desk.\u00a0 Every year there are information campaigns about domestic pets and fireworks, but never really anything about the effect on wildlife…<\/p>\n
I met up with Pete and Georgie at Church Point and we set off (in their car, but that’s a whole other story…) around Southeast Northumberland and Druridge Bay<\/a>.\u00a0 Perhaps my own favourite moment of the day came quite early as a Merlin<\/strong> <\/em>chased a Common Snipe<\/strong><\/em> through the dunes at Cresswell.\u00a0 An elusive Brambling<\/strong> <\/em>played hide and seek with us nearby and the Coots, Moorhens, Mallards, Teal, Wigeon, Gadwall, Tufted Duck <\/strong><\/em>and <\/strong>Shoveler<\/strong><\/em> at each pond we visited seemed unconcerned and not indicating the presence of the sinuous predator that enlivens so many of our trips on the coast.<\/p>\n As dusk approached things started to look a bit more interesting; Whooper Swans<\/strong><\/em> were clearly alert and agitated, all staring into the same reedbed.\u00a0 We’ve seen it so many times before…and then ‘whoosh’, ‘whoosh’, ‘whoosh’, ‘bang’, ‘bang’, ‘bang’, ‘bang’, ‘bang’, as a fireworks display on a nearby beach scattered everything!\u00a0 Ducks, geese, swans<\/strong><\/em> all took to the air and we finished the trip with not very much wildlife in view at all.<\/p>\n As we headed back to the car a figure appeared out of the dark “Dr Kitching. Slight change of plan, Sarah’s poorly so I’ve come to collect you”.\u00a0 The hero of the day was a man whose knowledge of the Northumberland coast is second to none, and whose blog is really worth checking out.\u00a0 Cheers Ipin<\/a>, you’re a star \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" As a chemist I’ve found fireworks fascinating for some time.\u00a0 While I was still teaching, I developed a series of demonstration experiments that illustrated how different colours are produced by varying the chemicals in the mix and managed, during one particularly spectacular demo, to set fire to a pile of homework and the surface of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,5,141,139],"tags":[118,373,270,170,168,171,56,198,127,269,169,182,130,181],"class_list":["post-1817","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-druridge","category-northumberland","category-northumberland-coast","category-southeast-northumberland","tag-brambling","tag-common-snipe","tag-coot","tag-gadwall","tag-goldeneye","tag-mallard","tag-merlin","tag-moorhen","tag-reed-bunting","tag-shoveler","tag-teal","tag-tufted-duck","tag-whooper-swan","tag-wigeon"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1817","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=1817"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1817\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1818,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1817\/revisions\/1818"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1817"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1817"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1817"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}