{"id":1941,"date":"2013-05-28T07:59:03","date_gmt":"2013-05-28T06:59:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/?p=1941"},"modified":"2013-05-28T07:59:03","modified_gmt":"2013-05-28T06:59:03","slug":"natures-bounty","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/birdwatching\/natures-bounty","title":{"rendered":"Nature&#8217;s bounty"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>After a day in the North Pennines, I had an hour at home before setting out for an evening mini-safari around <a href=\"http:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/tours.php?id=2\" target=\"_blank\">Druridge Bay<\/a>.\u00a0 I couldn&#8217;t have anticipated that the evening would bring one of the most astonishing things I&#8217;ve seen&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>I collected Fiona and Damien from Morpeth and then headed north east to Amble to collect Mark and Mrs Blake.\u00a0 The good weather of the earlier part of the day continued and we were soon watching four <em><strong>Avocets<\/strong><\/em>, and listening to a fifth, as a flock of <em><strong>Tree Sparrows<\/strong><\/em> foraged on a pile of rotting vegetation, a <em><strong>Grey Heron<\/strong><\/em> stalked along the edge of the pond and <em><strong>Black-headed Gulls<\/strong><\/em> hawked insects over nearby fields.\u00a0 One of Northumberland&#8217;s long-standing Bird Race teams passed through and picked up <em><strong>Avocet<\/strong> <\/em>and <em><strong>Little Gull<\/strong><\/em> for their day list.<\/p>\n<p>As we continued our journey north through the bay, it became obvious that there had been a huge hatch of insects.\u00a0 Dense clouds of them were hanging around us and they were providing a feast for <em><strong>Black-headed Gulls<\/strong><\/em> (several hundred), at least eight<em><strong> Little Gulls <\/strong><\/em>and countless <strong><\/strong><em><strong> Swallows, Swifts, House Martins <\/strong><\/em>and<strong> <\/strong><em><strong>Sand Martins<\/strong><\/em>.\u00a0 With barely any breeze, and mirror-calm water, the birds were flying back and forth deftly picking insects from the water&#8217;s surface, and the <em><strong>swallows<\/strong> <\/em>and <em><strong>martins<\/strong> <\/em>were passing within a few feet of us.\u00a0 The whirling, twisting mass of birds was breathtaking, and numbers had barely decreased by the time it was so dark that it was time for us to finish our evening.\u00a0 Lovely clients, common birds, abundant insects and a memorable wildlife spectacle \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>After a day in the North Pennines, I had an hour at home before setting out for an evening mini-safari around Druridge Bay.\u00a0 I couldn&#8217;t have anticipated that the evening would bring one of the most astonishing things I&#8217;ve seen&#8230; I collected Fiona and Damien from Morpeth and then headed north east to Amble 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":[3,9,5],"tags":[40,271,232,93,218,217,233,125],"class_list":["post-1941","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-birdwatching","category-druridge","category-northumberland","tag-avocet","tag-black-headed-gull","tag-house-martin","tag-little-gull","tag-sand-martin","tag-swallow","tag-swift","tag-tree-sparrow"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1941","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=1941"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1941\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1942,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1941\/revisions\/1942"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1941"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1941"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1941"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}