{"id":1908,"date":"2013-05-20T06:38:01","date_gmt":"2013-05-20T05:38:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/?p=1908"},"modified":"2013-05-20T06:38:01","modified_gmt":"2013-05-20T05:38:01","slug":"change-of-plan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/birdwatching\/change-of-plan","title":{"rendered":"Change of plan"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Snow on Monday,   glorious weather on Tuesday&#8230;and torrential rain on Wednesday \ud83d\ude41\u00a0 When I arrived to collect David and Janet for their Prestige Tour in the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/tours.php?id=1\" target=\"_blank\">Cheviot Valleys<\/a> we quickly decided to head towards the Northumberland coast instead as that would offer the chance of plenty of birdwatching with the prospect of being able to shelter from the worst of the weather.<\/p>\n<p>Starting at Stag Rocks,   we watched flocks of <em><strong>Eider<\/strong> <\/em>and <em><strong>Common Scoter<\/strong><\/em> as they rolled up and over the substantial waves and a <em><strong>Grey Seal<\/strong><\/em> swam just beyond the breaking surf.\u00a0 One thing that was immediately obvious was that there was a movement of <em><strong>Gannets<\/strong><\/em>; birds were flying over the rocks and more could be seen offshore.\u00a0 Heading down the coast, the intensity of the rain increased and we had our second seawatch of the day, this time just south of Cresswell.\u00a0 An almost continuous passage of <em><strong>Gannets<\/strong> <\/em>was evident as they headed north, flocks of <em><strong>Kittiwakes<\/strong> <\/em>and <em><strong>Guillemots<\/strong><\/em> were passing by, the occasional <em><strong>Fulmar<\/strong><\/em> arced up above the clifftops and a single <em><strong>Manx Shearwater<\/strong><\/em> easily outpaced the <em><strong>Gannets<\/strong><\/em>.\u00a0 <em><strong>Avocets<\/strong> <\/em>sat tight as the rain hammered down around them and, when the deluge finally ceased and blue sky and sunshine replaced the gloom, we watched a male <em><strong>Marsh Harrier<\/strong><\/em> as he quartered a nearby field before soaring heavenwards. A <em><strong>Great Crested Grebe<\/strong><\/em> sailed by serenely, a <em><strong>Whimbrel<\/strong> <\/em>flew north, five <em><strong>Brown Hares<\/strong><\/em> were engaged in some half-hearted chasing and <em><strong>Swifts, Swallows, House Martins <\/strong><\/em>and<strong><\/strong><em><strong> Sand Martins<\/strong><\/em> all took advantage of the feast of insects that had been stirred to activity by the improvement in the weather.<\/p>\n<p>Even in poor weather, Northumberland can produce some excellent birdwatching \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Snow on Monday, glorious weather on Tuesday&#8230;and torrential rain on Wednesday \ud83d\ude41\u00a0 When I arrived to collect David and Janet for their Prestige Tour in the Cheviot Valleys we quickly decided to head towards the Northumberland coast instead as that would offer the chance of plenty of birdwatching with the prospect of being able to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,8,9,105,5,141],"tags":[40,57,67,172,149,185,488,835,186,364,397,217,233,231],"class_list":["post-1908","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-birdwatching","category-cheviot-valleys","category-druridge","category-north-sea","category-northumberland","category-northumberland-coast","tag-avocet","tag-brown-hare","tag-common-scoter","tag-curlew","tag-eider","tag-gannet","tag-great-crested-grebe","tag-grey-seal","tag-guillemot","tag-manx-shearwater","tag-marsh-harrier","tag-swallow","tag-swift","tag-whimbrel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1908","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=1908"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1908\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1914,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1908\/revisions\/1914"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1908"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1908"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1908"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}