{"id":1877,"date":"2013-04-17T17:52:55","date_gmt":"2013-04-17T16:52:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/?p=1877"},"modified":"2013-04-17T17:52:55","modified_gmt":"2013-04-17T16:52:55","slug":"now-thats-a-sign-of-spring","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/birdwatching\/now-thats-a-sign-of-spring","title":{"rendered":"Now, that’s a sign of Spring"},"content":{"rendered":"

With the wind still whistling around our ears last Thursday, I arrived at Church Point to collect Paul and Alex for a mini-safari around Druridge Bay<\/a> and southeast Northumberland.<\/p>\n

Red-breasted Mergansers<\/strong><\/em> flew by at our first stop, as Alex’s sharp eyes picked out a Roe Deer,<\/strong><\/em> eying us nervously from the opposite bank of the river before vanishing into the undergrowth (the deer that is, not Alex!).\u00a0 More Mergansers<\/strong> <\/em>were displaying (quite a comical act), as were a pair of Great Crested Grebes<\/strong><\/em>, including ‘dancing with weed’ – that could conjure up some odd images \ud83d\ude42\u00a0 Meadow Pipits<\/strong><\/em> were picking their way along a grassy field, Wigeon<\/strong> <\/em>were grazing, a single Long-tailed Duck<\/strong><\/em> stayed distant and spent much of it’s time underwater and Tufted Duck, Gadwall <\/strong><\/em>and <\/strong>Goldeneye<\/strong><\/em> demonstrated that you don’t need to be colourful to be attractive.<\/p>\n

Despite the weather, and the late arrival of many of our summer visitors, one pair of birds seemed oblivious to the conditions.\u00a0 A female Marsh Harrier<\/strong><\/em> fought against the breeze before dropping out of sight, only to reappear again as a male, who we had watched hunting at some distance, flew over with prey.\u00a0 The female rose ahead of him, and as he caught up with her he tossed the love offering through the air and into her talons.\u00a0 Harrier food-passes will always be one of my favourite wildlife spectacles.\u00a0 The raw emotion and the invisible connection between the birds, following the arc of the food item as it travels between them, is just very, very special.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

With the wind still whistling around our ears last Thursday, I arrived at Church Point to collect Paul and Alex for a mini-safari around Druridge Bay and southeast Northumberland. Red-breasted Mergansers flew by at our first stop, as Alex’s sharp eyes picked out a Roe Deer, eying us nervously from the opposite bank of the […]<\/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":[170,168,488,68,397,207,188,182,181],"class_list":["post-1877","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-birdwatching","category-druridge","category-northumberland","category-southeast-northumberland","tag-gadwall","tag-goldeneye","tag-great-crested-grebe","tag-long-tailed-duck","tag-marsh-harrier","tag-meadow-pipit","tag-red-breasted-merganser","tag-tufted-duck","tag-wigeon"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1877","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=1877"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1877\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1879,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1877\/revisions\/1879"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1877"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1877"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1877"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}