{"id":1985,"date":"2013-07-02T18:05:46","date_gmt":"2013-07-02T17:05:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/?p=1985"},"modified":"2013-07-02T18:05:46","modified_gmt":"2013-07-02T17:05:46","slug":"unbridled-passion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/birdwatching\/unbridled-passion","title":{"rendered":"Unbridled Passion"},"content":{"rendered":"

I love a lot of things; seabirds<\/strong><\/em>, cetaceans<\/strong><\/em>, Northumberland, photography and, of course, Sarah \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n

When news broke yesterday that a Bridled Tern<\/strong><\/em> had been discovered roosting near the jetty on Inner Farne<\/a> I immediately began wondering whether it would hang around until today and, if it did, how could I fit a visit to Inner Farne into my schedule, between office work this morning and a meeting with the Northumberland Wildlife Trust<\/a> this afternoon?\u00a0 After getting a few of my admin tasks out of the way first thing, a quick ‘phone call to Billy Shiel’s booking office secured my place on a sailing at 10:00.\u00a0 The drive north on the A1 was plagued by the ever-present worry that accompanies a twitch – would the bird still be there?<\/p>\n

Arriving at Seahouses harbour in good time for the sailing I was chatting to William Shiel when he mentioned that he was about to send a boat across to the islands to collect one of his crew…and would I like to go across on that one?\u00a0 So, I had the extraordinary experience of being the only passenger on Glad Tidings IV and was soon watching the tern<\/strong><\/em>, although it was quite distant.\u00a0 The 10:00 boat arrived and the birders on it had a view of the bird for about five seconds before it flew off.\u00a0 At about 11:00 I heard the bird calling, but it couldn’t be located anywhere in the roost.\u00a0 Then, half an hour later, Phil<\/a> found it roosting on the rocks just below a group of Puffins.\u00a0 As boats arrived and collected their passengers, I was eventually left on the island with two other birders and a few of the National Trust Rangers.<\/p>\n

We could see our boat heading across Staple Sound from the outer islands then, the stuff of dreams; the roosting terns lifted and the Bridled Tern<\/strong><\/em> flew past us, then back, then past us, then towards us…then settled on the rocks no more than 30′ away \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n

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

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

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

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

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

With excellent help from William and his skippers, the very accommodating Farne Islands rangers who were ‘enjoying’ the unusual experience of visitors on Inner Farne in a morning, and the remarkably obliging Bridled Tern<\/strong><\/em> posing in front of my camera, I headed back down the A1 for my meeting full of enthusiasm…not that I’m ever anything other than enthusiastic when meeting with NWT of course \ud83d\ude09<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I love a lot of things; seabirds, cetaceans, Northumberland, photography and, of course, Sarah \ud83d\ude42 When news broke yesterday that a Bridled Tern had been discovered roosting near the jetty on Inner Farne I immediately began wondering whether it would hang around until today and, if it did, how could I fit a visit to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,11,5,16],"tags":[577,225],"class_list":["post-1985","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-birdwatching","category-farnes","category-northumberland","category-photography","tag-bridled-tern","tag-puffin"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1985","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=1985"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1985\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1992,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1985\/revisions\/1992"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1985"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1985"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1985"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}