{"id":1861,"date":"2013-03-06T16:39:29","date_gmt":"2013-03-06T15:39:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/?p=1861"},"modified":"2013-03-06T16:39:29","modified_gmt":"2013-03-06T15:39:29","slug":"would-you-like-to-stroke-my-badger","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/birdwatching\/would-you-like-to-stroke-my-badger","title":{"rendered":"Would you like to stroke my Badger?"},"content":{"rendered":"

On Saturday I was in the Kielder <\/a>area with Sarah, collecting our new mountain bikes from Ian at The Bike Place<\/a>. The weather was glorious; blue skies, sunshine – everything you would want on a day there with clients.<\/p>\n

Skip forward to Sunday morning…<\/p>\n

I collected Jon and Alison, Jill and Steve & Laura and Nicola from Hexham and we headed north towards the Border Forests.\u00a0 The weather was somewhat different; overcast, not even a slight breeze and the air was damp and bitterly cold.\u00a0 In those conditions the forest is an ethereal place, remote, other-worldly and an experience in itself.\u00a0 Mistle Thrushes<\/strong><\/em> and Chaffinches<\/strong> <\/em>seemed to be everywhere that we looked, Common Buzzards<\/strong><\/em> were sitting hunched on tree-tops and telegraph poles, Roe Deer<\/strong><\/em> crossed the track ahead of us and the only Common Crossbills<\/strong><\/em> of the day were a group of four that flew by as we were trying to locate a very vocal Raven.<\/strong><\/em> Then, a very nice policeman stopped and showed us his Badger<\/strong> <\/em>and Red Squirrel<\/em> \ud83d\ude42\u00a0<\/strong>A Green Woodpecker<\/strong><\/em> yaffled from the wooded slopes below us and Goldcrests, Blue Tits, Great Tits <\/strong><\/em>and <\/strong>Robins<\/strong><\/em> <\/strong>could all be heard.<\/p>\n

Heading towards the border a Dipper<\/strong> <\/em>sat on a rock at the water’s edge, bobbing up and down before heading upstream in a whirr of wing beats.\u00a0 Red Grouse<\/strong><\/em> was found soon after heading up onto the moors around Newcastleton and the next addition to the trip list was probably the highlight of the day (apart from the Badger<\/strong><\/em>…).\u00a0 The next grouse was well hidden, with only it’s head visible but, as I stopped the car to let everyone have a good look at it, it raised itself from the heather and revealed it’s true identity; a stunning male Black Grouse<\/strong><\/em>, resplendent in the day’s only real attempt at sunshine.\u00a0 He wasn’t alone though, as two more Blackcock<\/strong> <\/em>appeared from amongst the heather and eventually a total of five flew across the road and settled again.<\/p>\n

After a picnic stop in one of my favourite places, we went in search of Wild Goats.<\/strong><\/em>\u00a0<\/strong>It didn’t take too long to find one and, as is often the case, <\/strong>o<\/strong>nce you’ve found one you soon find more.\u00a0 This prompted the following exchange in the back of the car “That goat’s got a baby” “You’re kidding me”…<\/p>\n

Heading back towards Northumberland a flock of Fieldfares<\/strong> <\/em>were on telegraph wires and two Great Spotted Woodpeckers<\/strong><\/em> were perched at the top of a small tree by the road.\u00a0 A walk to the hide at Bakethin produced Goldeneye, Mallard, Tufted Duck <\/strong><\/em>and <\/strong>Pochard<\/strong><\/em> <\/strong>and one of Northumberland’s more exotic inhabitants rounded off the day as we watched at least five Mandarins<\/strong><\/em>, including three gaudy drakes and two subtly beautiful ducks in a tributary of the north Tyne.<\/p>\n

The weather was an experience, we had some excellent wildlife to enjoy, and we hardly saw another person all day…but what really made the day for me was having six clients who all got on so well with each other, were really enthusiastic about birdwatching and wildlife and provided a steady level of entertainment throughout the day \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On Saturday I was in the Kielder area with Sarah, collecting our new mountain bikes from Ian at The Bike Place. The weather was glorious; blue skies, sunshine – everything you would want on a day there with clients. Skip forward to Sunday morning… I collected Jon and Alison, Jill and Steve & Laura and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,15,5],"tags":[54,46,102,148,165,257,23,135,168,25,45,209,171,203,420,457,208,116,66,182,495],"class_list":["post-1861","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-birdwatching","category-kielder","category-northumberland","tag-black-grouse","tag-blue-tit","tag-chaffinch","tag-common-buzzard","tag-common-crossbill","tag-dipper","tag-fieldfare","tag-goldcrest","tag-goldeneye","tag-great-spotted-woodpecker","tag-great-tit","tag-green-woodpecker","tag-mallard","tag-mandarin","tag-pochard","tag-raven","tag-red-grouse","tag-robin","tag-roe-deer","tag-tufted-duck","tag-wild-goat"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1861","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=1861"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1861\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1862,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1861\/revisions\/1862"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1861"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1861"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1861"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}