{"id":2145,"date":"2013-12-09T19:38:58","date_gmt":"2013-12-09T18:38:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/?p=2145"},"modified":"2013-12-09T19:43:44","modified_gmt":"2013-12-09T18:43:44","slug":"winter-wonderland-day-two-05122013","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/birdwatching\/winter-wonderland-day-two-05122013","title":{"rendered":"Winter Wonderland Day Two 05\/12\/2013"},"content":{"rendered":"

04:30, and I wake to what sounds like a train crashing through our garden.\u00a0 It isn’t though, instead it’s the howling gales that had been forecast.\u00a0 Meeting up with David for breakfast at The Swan<\/a>, I’m glad that we switched our day in Druridge Bay<\/a> and Southeast Northumberland to today.\u00a0 Lindisfarne <\/a>in howling gales and torrential rain would be close to unbearable, Druridge Bay would be much closer to manageable…<\/p>\n

Starting with a seawatch as the rain lashed against the rear window of the car, Eider<\/strong> <\/em>and a single Common Scoter<\/strong><\/em> were just offshore as Sanderling<\/strong> <\/em>scurried around the piles of seaweed on the shore, a ghostly white adult Mediterranean Gull<\/strong><\/em> struggled past against the wind and two Dark-bellied Brent Geese<\/strong><\/em> flew north low over the waves.\u00a0 Then the weather cleared and we were suddenly in beautiful sunshine and blue skies with a light breeze…before the wind strengthened again, the sky turned black and a squally shower had the entire surface of the pool at Hauxley<\/strong> looking like it was boiling.\u00a0 Goldeneye<\/strong><\/em>, Long-tailed Duck, Tufted Duck, Scaup <\/strong><\/em>and <\/strong>Little Grebe<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

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

all faced the elements…then it turned nice again and a Peregrine<\/strong> <\/em>flew through, scattering Wigeon<\/strong> <\/em>and Teal<\/strong> <\/em>but paying them no heed \ud83d\ude42\u00a0 A line of Black-headed Gulls<\/strong><\/em> dip-feeding into the breeze at East Chevington<\/strong> contained a surprise in the dainty form of a Little Gull<\/strong><\/em>, then it started to rain again.\u00a0 Sitting by the River Coquet<\/strong> eating lunch, we watched Eider<\/strong><\/em> and Red-breasted Merganser<\/strong><\/em>, as well as Lapwing, Turnstone, Curlew <\/strong><\/em>and<\/strong> Redshank<\/strong><\/em>…as the first of the afternoon’s hailstorms began.\u00a0 Another break in the weather brought David an excellent photo opportunity with a flock of Eider<\/strong><\/em>…<\/p>\n

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

before hailstones the size of peas led to a hasty retreat back to the shelter of the car \ud83d\ude42 Soon the hail was replaced by snow, before another break in the weather brought some simply sublime late afternoon light.<\/p>\n

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

and a flock of Lapwings<\/strong> <\/em>were tossed about in the air like pieces of black and white paper.<\/p>\n

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

With the howling northwesterly winds, the water at Cresswell<\/strong> was being driven towards the channel under the road and between the dunes.\u00a0 A Black-necked Grebe<\/strong><\/em> swam by and then, subtly, and with the inevitability of the tide, water started flowing the other way and a boundary between wind-driven pond and incoming tidal surge developed in front of us.\u00a0 After a Starling<\/strong> <\/em>murmuration just up the coast,<\/p>\n

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

we followed the road back down through Druridge and discovered the tide had overwhelmed the culvert and was still coming in, but now straight over the road in front of us.\u00a0 Watching the car in front safely traverse the water, we made our way across and headed back to The Swan at the end of an extraordinary day.\u00a0 David was a pleasure to guide on this holiday, and he kindly sent us the images that illustrate the two blog posts \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n

We’re taking bookings now for our 2014 holidays<\/a>, so please get in touch for more details or to book.\u00a0 We’ve got a range of holidays, each designed to showcase the best of Northumberland, the North Pennines and the Scottish Borders at the best times of the year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

04:30, and I wake to what sounds like a train crashing through our garden.\u00a0 It isn’t though, instead it’s the howling gales that had been forecast.\u00a0 Meeting up with David for breakfast at The Swan, I’m glad that we switched our day in Druridge Bay and Southeast Northumberland to today.\u00a0 Lindisfarne in howling gales and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,9,5,16,139],"tags":[271,605,67,172,173,149,168,123,360,93,68,193,55,188,358,80,318,161,169,359,181],"class_list":["post-2145","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-birdwatching","category-druridge","category-northumberland","category-photography","category-southeast-northumberland","tag-black-headed-gull","tag-black-necked-grebe","tag-common-scoter","tag-curlew","tag-dark-bellied-brent-goose","tag-eider","tag-goldeneye","tag-lapwing","tag-little-grebe","tag-little-gull","tag-long-tailed-duck","tag-mediterranean-gull","tag-peregrine","tag-red-breasted-merganser","tag-redshank","tag-sanderling","tag-scaup","tag-starling","tag-teal","tag-turnstone","tag-wigeon"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2145","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=2145"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2145\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2165,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2145\/revisions\/2165"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2145"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2145"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2145"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}