{"id":2036,"date":"2013-08-07T09:12:21","date_gmt":"2013-08-07T08:12:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/?p=2036"},"modified":"2014-02-18T10:03:44","modified_gmt":"2014-02-18T09:03:44","slug":"i-am-gadwall","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/birdwatching\/i-am-gadwall","title":{"rendered":"“I am Gadwall…”"},"content":{"rendered":"

After the heavy rain of Monday, it was good to drive to Newbiggin, to collect Bryan and Zoe & Simon, in warm sunshine and broken cloud.\u00a0 Our evening Otter mini-Safari<\/a> would take in the best of Druridge Bay<\/a> and southeast Northumberland…<\/p>\n

One thing that I always enjoy is the response to bird names from clients who’ve never come across a particular species before.\u00a0 Godwit<\/strong><\/em> <\/strong> is a name that always raises a chuckle, and both Bar-tailed Godwit <\/strong><\/em>and <\/strong>Black-tailed Godwit<\/strong><\/em>, resplendent in their breeding finery, were among the noisy flocks of Redshank <\/strong><\/em>and <\/strong>Curlew.\u00a0 Turnstones<\/strong><\/em>\u00a0<\/strong>were also looking particularly stunning, <\/strong>two juvenile Marsh Harriers<\/strong><\/em> were drifting over reedbeds, a particularly dark male Pheasant<\/strong><\/em> couldn’t make his mind up which way to run when we stopped to admire him and a Stoat<\/strong> <\/em>poked it’s head out of the grass, then back in, then out again, before finally running across in front of us. \u00a0Gadwall <\/strong><\/em>and <\/strong>Wigeon<\/strong><\/em> invoked more bemusement at bird names and we added Red Admiral, Meadow Brown <\/strong><\/em>and <\/strong>Magpie Moth<\/strong><\/em> to the trip list.\u00a0 Small groups of Starlings<\/strong> <\/em>were heading to roost and it was time for us to head to our final site of the evening.<\/p>\n

As the sun dropped towards the horizon we settled to scan for any indication of Otter<\/strong><\/em> <\/strong>activity.\u00a0 A Sparrowhawk <\/strong><\/em>passed through, causing consternation in the <\/strong>Swallows, Sand Martins <\/strong><\/em>and <\/strong>House Martins<\/strong><\/em> and a Common Snipe<\/strong><\/em> was illuminated by a patch of sunlight, raising it from the level of ‘brown bird with long bill that pokes it’s face in mud’ to something quite sublime.\u00a0 Then, a sudden panic among the ducks.\u00a0 <\/strong><\/em>Females with ducklings were fanning out rapidly from one edge of the pond and we intensified our scanning of the reedy margins.\u00a0 Nothing, but the birds weren’t settling.\u00a0 Then a pair of Mute Swans<\/strong><\/em> gave a call that we’ve come to associate with one thing, and it was only a matter of time…in the dark shadow of a reedbed, I saw a line of bright water appear.\u00a0 Everyone’s attention turned to that edge of the pool and then the Otter<\/strong> <\/em>popped up at the surface \ud83d\ude42\u00a0 For 20 minutes it made it’s way steadily across the water, including a stunning few minutes in the reflection of the sunset, before finally vanishing into the darkening gloom.<\/p>\n

As we headed back towards Newbiggin, the discussion turned back to bird names and led to one of my all time favourite things that any client has said “I am Gadwall, a wizard of the elven kingdom, and you are Turnstone, a Dwarf” \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

After the heavy rain of Monday, it was good to drive to Newbiggin, to collect Bryan and Zoe & Simon, in warm sunshine and broken cloud.\u00a0 Our evening Otter mini-Safari would take in the best of Druridge Bay and southeast Northumberland… One thing that I always enjoy is the response to bird names from clients […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,9,5,21,139],"tags":[147,242,172,170,232,582,171,397,339,178,837,504,336,358,218,204,131,161,183,217,359,181],"class_list":["post-2036","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-birdwatching","category-druridge","category-northumberland","category-otter","category-southeast-northumberland","tag-bar-tailed-godwit","tag-black-tailed-godwit","tag-curlew","tag-gadwall","tag-house-martin","tag-magpie-moth","tag-mallard","tag-marsh-harrier","tag-meadow-brown","tag-mute-swan","tag-otter","tag-pheasant","tag-red-admiral","tag-redshank","tag-sand-martin","tag-snipe","tag-sparrowhawk","tag-starling","tag-stoat","tag-swallow","tag-turnstone","tag-wigeon"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2036","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=2036"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2036\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3177,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2036\/revisions\/3177"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2036"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2036"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2036"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}