{"id":2131,"date":"2013-12-06T19:19:11","date_gmt":"2013-12-06T18:19:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/?p=2131"},"modified":"2013-12-09T18:29:08","modified_gmt":"2013-12-09T17:29:08","slug":"winter-wonderland-day-one-4-5122013","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/birdwatching\/winter-wonderland-day-one-4-5122013","title":{"rendered":"Winter Wonderland Day One 04\/12\/2013"},"content":{"rendered":"

As I met up with David for breakfast at The Swan<\/a> on Wednesday morning, ahead of two days on the Northumberland coast, we’d already switched our itinerary round.\u00a0 The plan to visit Holy Island<\/a> on Thursday looked as though it might be slightly impacted by the weather, so we switched Druridge Bay<\/a> to that day instead.<\/p>\n

The drive north on the A1 was in glorious weather, with Common Buzzards<\/strong><\/em> soaring low over plantations in the chill of the early morning and we were soon on Holy Island<\/strong> in a stiffening breeze, carefully stalking towards a flock of Dark-bellied Brent Geese<\/strong><\/em> that posed for David’s camera.\u00a0 Bar-tailed Godwits, <\/strong><\/em>and a lone<\/strong> Black-tailed Godwit<\/strong><\/em> were probing the exposed mud of the harbour at low tide and Wigeon<\/strong><\/em> and Teal<\/strong> <\/em>were on the Rocket Pool.\u00a0 A Common Kestrel<\/strong> <\/em>was hovering nearby and, as the tide turned, we headed to the causeway to see what would be pushed towards us by the advancing water.\u00a0 Redshank, Curlew, Dunlin,<\/strong><\/em> <\/strong>Bar-tailed Godwit, Shelduck<\/strong><\/em> and a Little Egret<\/strong><\/em> all fed along the swelling channels<\/p>\n

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

and then a mass of Pale-bellied Brent Geese<\/strong><\/em> flew in from the south.\u00a0 As the water began to lap at the edge of the causeway we drove back on to the mainland, and headed to a quiet stretch of shoreline where I knew David could use the cover of a hedgerow to approach a flock of Pale-bellied Brents<\/strong> <\/em>whilst avoiding detection.<\/p>\n

\"Pale-bellied<\/a><\/p>\n

Using the car as a photographic hide (something of a theme\u00a0 for the holiday!) we got very close views of a flock of Wigeon<\/strong><\/em>,<\/p>\n

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

and then we settled in the iconic shadow of Bamburgh Castle <\/strong>and scanned the sea in temperatures that were now bone-chilling \ud83d\ude42\u00a0 Purple Sandpipers, Turnstones, Oystercatchers <\/strong><\/em>and<\/strong> Redshank<\/strong><\/em> were roosting just above the water line and beyond the rafts of Eider<\/strong> <\/em>were flocks of Common Scoter<\/strong><\/em>, with one large group of females looking stunningly orange in the beautiful late afternoon sunlight.\u00a0 Long-tailed Ducks<\/strong><\/em> played hide and seek, utilising their propensity for diving, and the developing swell, to keep me on my toes as I located a group with the ‘scope so that David could see them.\u00a0 Scanning the scoter flocks paid dividends as a female Velvet Scoter<\/strong><\/em> rose up and over one advancing wave crest, Red-throated Divers<\/strong><\/em> cruised along in their eternal search for fish and a last scan before we headed back down the coast produced a Slavonian Grebe<\/strong><\/em>.\u00a0 As it turned dark, the clear sky afforded excellent ‘scope views of the crescent Venus<\/strong>, and the thinnest sliver of crescent Moon<\/strong>.\u00a0 So soon after New Moon would be a spring tide, and the one forecast for the following day was predicted to be a big one…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As I met up with David for breakfast at The Swan on Wednesday morning, ahead of two days on the Northumberland coast, we’d already switched our itinerary round.\u00a0 The plan to visit Holy Island on Thursday looked as though it might be slightly impacted by the weather, so we switched Druridge Bay to that day […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[109,3,119,5,141,139],"tags":[147,242,148,320,67,172,173,288,149,243,68,210,108,179,176,69,358,189,177,169,359,595,181],"class_list":["post-2131","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bamburgh-castle","category-birdwatching","category-holy-island","category-northumberland","category-northumberland-coast","category-southeast-northumberland","tag-bar-tailed-godwit","tag-black-tailed-godwit","tag-common-buzzard","tag-common-kestrel","tag-common-scoter","tag-curlew","tag-dark-bellied-brent-goose","tag-dunlin","tag-eider","tag-little-egret","tag-long-tailed-duck","tag-oystercatcher","tag-pale-bellied-brent-goose","tag-pintail","tag-purple-sandpiper","tag-red-throated-diver","tag-redshank","tag-shelduck","tag-slavonian-grebe","tag-teal","tag-turnstone","tag-velvet-scoter","tag-wigeon"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2131","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=2131"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2131\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2143,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2131\/revisions\/2143"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2131"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2131"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2131"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}