{"id":1933,"date":"2013-05-25T07:33:08","date_gmt":"2013-05-25T06:33:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/?p=1933"},"modified":"2013-05-25T07:33:08","modified_gmt":"2013-05-25T06:33:08","slug":"spring-gentian-time-in-the-hills","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/birdwatching\/spring-gentian-time-in-the-hills","title":{"rendered":"Spring (Gentian) time in the hills"},"content":{"rendered":"

The ‘quality over quantity’ birdwatching in the North Pennines<\/a> has been the predominant feature of our days out with clients in the last two months, and a ‘phone enquiry on Tuesday saw me collecting David and Margaret on Wednesday morning for a day birdwatching in the hills.<\/p>\n

Red Grouse<\/strong><\/em> was the first of the upland specialities we encountered and, after a few single birds scattered across the moors we came across a pair with a brood of 10 chicks.\u00a0 The adults watched us carefully as their offspring wandered about, completely unconcerned by our presence.\u00a0 Lapwing<\/strong> <\/em>and Curlew<\/strong> <\/em>seemed to be everywhere and one Lapwing<\/strong> <\/em>provided our only sighting of Snipe<\/strong> <\/em>for the day, as it chased one over the road in front of us.\u00a0 Oystercatcher, Redshank <\/strong><\/em>and<\/strong> Golden Plover<\/strong><\/em> <\/strong>were noisily displaying, Kestrels<\/strong> <\/em>were stationary in the strong breeze and our first three Black Grouse<\/strong><\/em> were all seen distantly.\u00a0 I was sure that we’d get much closer views of Blackcock<\/strong> <\/em>and, sure enough, at the same spot where I photographed a displaying bird earlier this month<\/a>, we came across what were probably the same two birds from that trip.<\/p>\n

A walk at Cow Green reservoir brought a non-avian highlight as Spring Gentians<\/strong><\/em> were in bloom.\u00a0 If you’ve never seen one, this is what they look like \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n

\"Spring<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Spring<\/a><\/p>\n

After our walk we watched a small group of Blackcock<\/strong> <\/em>as they engaged in their, slightly comical, lekking behaviour before heading back north east after another excellent day in the hills.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The ‘quality over quantity’ birdwatching in the North Pennines has been the predominant feature of our days out with clients in the last two months, and a ‘phone enquiry on Tuesday saw me collecting David and Margaret on Wednesday morning for a day birdwatching in the hills. Red Grouse was the first of the upland […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,12,5],"tags":[54,172,175,128,123,210,208,358,204,295,235],"class_list":["post-1933","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-birdwatching","category-pennines","category-northumberland","tag-black-grouse","tag-curlew","tag-golden-plover","tag-kestrel","tag-lapwing","tag-oystercatcher","tag-red-grouse","tag-redshank","tag-snipe","tag-spring-gentian","tag-wheatear"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1933","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=1933"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1933\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1936,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1933\/revisions\/1936"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1933"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1933"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1933"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}