{"id":1979,"date":"2013-06-26T14:21:41","date_gmt":"2013-06-26T13:21:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/?p=1979"},"modified":"2013-06-26T14:21:41","modified_gmt":"2013-06-26T13:21:41","slug":"sailing-the-ocean-blue-seal-safari-20062013","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/northumberland\/sailing-the-ocean-blue-seal-safari-20062013","title":{"rendered":"Sailing the ocean blue; Seal Safari 20\/06\/2013"},"content":{"rendered":"

In any list of ‘Northumberland’s Big 5’ there will always be disagreements about the species that should be included.\u00a0 One species that really epitomises the wildlife of North Northumberland is the ‘hook-nosed sea pig’…or Grey Seal<\/strong><\/em> to give it a less offensive handle than the translation of it’s Latin name \ud83d\ude09<\/p>\n

I collected John and Jennifer from Church Point and we drove northwards along the Northumberland coast.\u00a0 Arriving in Seahouses, ready for our Seal Cruise<\/a> on Glad Tidings V, conditions were near perfect; beautiful blue sky, calm sea and just the slight breeze that always seems to be present on the coast, even on calm days.\u00a0 As the distance between ourselves and the mainland increased, streams of Fulmars, Kittiwakes<\/strong><\/em>, Puffins, Guillemots <\/strong><\/em>and <\/strong>Razorbills<\/strong><\/em> were heading to and from the islands, Gannets<\/strong> <\/em>were passing by in impressive groups, Cormorants<\/strong> <\/em>and Shags<\/strong> <\/em>were sitting like sentinels at the gates of some mystical wildlife world and then we came across the seals. <\/strong><\/em>\u00a0<\/strong>Bathing in the sunshine, and only occasionally lifting their heads to avoid unexpected sprays of breaking surf, they allowed a close approach that had an entire boat full of camera-wielding visitors clicking away like a knitting circle.<\/p>\n

Back on dry land we sat and had lunch, just along the coast from the impressive bulk of Bamburgh Castle,<\/strong> <\/strong><\/em>and then continued north to look for more<\/strong> seals.\u00a0 <\/strong><\/em>As high tide approached they could be seen ‘bottling’ close to Holy Island, <\/strong> <\/em>and we made our way back down the coast.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In any list of ‘Northumberland’s Big 5’ there will always be disagreements about the species that should be included.\u00a0 One species that really epitomises the wildlife of North Northumberland is the ‘hook-nosed sea pig’…or Grey Seal to give it a less offensive handle than the translation of it’s Latin name \ud83d\ude09 I collected John and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[109,11,20,5,141],"tags":[372,122,185,835,186,301,225,226,377],"class_list":["post-1979","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bamburgh-castle","category-farnes","category-grey-seal","category-northumberland","category-northumberland-coast","tag-cormorant","tag-fulmar","tag-gannet","tag-grey-seal","tag-guillemot","tag-kittiwake","tag-puffin","tag-razorbill","tag-shag"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1979","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=1979"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1979\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1980,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1979\/revisions\/1980"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1979"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1979"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1979"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}