{"id":1955,"date":"2013-06-07T07:59:39","date_gmt":"2013-06-07T06:59:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/?p=1955"},"modified":"2013-06-07T07:59:39","modified_gmt":"2013-06-07T06:59:39","slug":"otter-watching-020613-patience-pays-off","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/northumberland\/otter-watching-020613-patience-pays-off","title":{"rendered":"Otter Watching 02\/06\/13 – Patience pays off"},"content":{"rendered":"

Just a couple of days before the end of 2008, I led an Otter Safari<\/a> that produced prolonged sightings of our target species…just 5 seconds after arriving at the first site I’d planned to visit that day!\u00a0 That produced a complication all of it’s own – how do you keep a family with a young child entertained for over 7 1\/2 hours?\u00a0 In that case the answer was rockpooling; not the most enjoyable of experiences as I plunged my arm into the icy cold water to turn over a series of rocks chosen by a very excited four year-old.\u00a0 Usually though, wildlife requires a bit more of a patient approach…<\/p>\n

I collected John and Kelly from Morpeth railway station on Sunday afternoon, in glorious sunshine, and we set off to search Druridge Bay<\/a> and southeast Northumberland.In the warm afternoon, with a myriad of insects buzzing around, Black-headed <\/strong><\/em>and <\/strong>Little Gulls, Swallows, Swifts <\/strong><\/em>and <\/strong>House <\/strong><\/em>and <\/strong>Sand Martins<\/strong><\/em> were all giving incredibly close views as they sallied back and forth in their pursuit of the tiny morsels of protein.\u00a0 Grey Herons<\/strong><\/em> were standing by the water’s edge, Little Grebes<\/strong><\/em> dived, re-surfaced, dived, re-surfaced repeatedly and Mallard, Gadwall <\/strong><\/em>and <\/strong>Tufted Duck<\/strong><\/em> seemed to be in two minds whether to simply laze around or engage in some half-hearted courtship.\u00a0 After 3 hours of peace and tranquility, and no Otters, <\/strong><\/em>I was wondering if we should move to another location.\u00a0 Instead I decided that staying put would be the better option…<\/p>\n

A pair of Mallards<\/strong> <\/em>came out of a gap in the reeds, no hurry, no panic but taking a direct line out to open water.\u00a0 I focused my attention on where they’d just appeared from and then a dark, menacing, sinuous shape twisted and turned in amongst the reeds and we had our Otter<\/strong>.<\/em>\u00a0 Sometimes, you just need a little patience \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Just a couple of days before the end of 2008, I led an Otter Safari that produced prolonged sightings of our target species…just 5 seconds after arriving at the first site I’d planned to visit that day!\u00a0 That produced a complication all of it’s own – how do you keep a family with a young […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,5,21,139],"tags":[271,170,283,232,360,93,171,837,218,217,233,182],"class_list":["post-1955","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-druridge","category-northumberland","category-otter","category-southeast-northumberland","tag-black-headed-gull","tag-gadwall","tag-grey-heron","tag-house-martin","tag-little-grebe","tag-little-gull","tag-mallard","tag-otter","tag-sand-martin","tag-swallow","tag-swift","tag-tufted-duck"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1955","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=1955"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1955\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1956,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1955\/revisions\/1956"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1955"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1955"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1955"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}