{"id":2251,"date":"2014-02-23T18:48:41","date_gmt":"2014-02-23T17:48:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/?p=2251"},"modified":"2014-02-23T18:48:41","modified_gmt":"2014-02-23T17:48:41","slug":"five-star-birdwatching-northumberland-coast-200214","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/birdwatching\/five-star-birdwatching-northumberland-coast-200214","title":{"rendered":"Five star birdwatching; Northumberland Coast 20\/02\/14"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Our fourth trip this week was a day birdwatching with Simon, who was back again after previous trips including <a href=\"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/northumberland\/my-lucky-tilley-hat\" target=\"_blank\">a stunning Farne Deeps pelagic<\/a> in 2012.\u00a0 We&#8217;d spoken in advance of the trip and Simon was keen to add a few of Northumberland&#8217;s wintering birds to his life list; <em><strong>divers, grebes, Purple Sandpiper <\/strong><\/em>and<strong> <\/strong><em><strong>Brambling<\/strong><\/em> were all mentioned as desirable.<\/p>\n<p>When I arrived to collect him on Thursday morning, I was still wrestling with the challenge of heading inland for <em><strong>Brambling<\/strong>, <\/em>yet leaving plenty of time to explore the <strong>Northumberland coast<\/strong>.\u00a0 That worry was quickly taken away, as putting a feeder up outside the holiday cottage meant that Simon had found one of the species on his wish list himself \ud83d\ude42\u00a0 Covering most of the coast from north to south produced five lifers;\u00a0 <em><strong>Red-throated Divers<\/strong><\/em> just beyond the surf, <em><strong>Long-tailed Ducks<\/strong><\/em> including a breathtakingly beautiful drake, <em><strong>Purple Sandpipers<\/strong><\/em> unobtrusively poking around in rock pools, displaying <em><strong>Goldeneye<\/strong><\/em> rivaling the attractiveness of the <em><strong>Long-tailed Ducks<\/strong><\/em> and, as the afternoon light faded and the rain finally arrived, a very obliging <em><strong>Water Rail<\/strong><\/em>.\u00a0 <em><strong>Twite, Stonechat, Yellowhammer, Reed Bunting, Skylark, Marsh Harrier, Slavonian, Little <\/strong><\/em>and<strong> <\/strong><em><strong>Red-necked Grebes, Shelduck, Bar-tailed Godwit, Dunlin, Grey <\/strong><\/em>and<strong> <\/strong><em><strong>Golden Plover, Lapwing, Gannet, Curlew, Teal, Mallard <\/strong><\/em>and<strong> <\/strong><em><strong>Wigeon<\/strong><\/em> may have been reduced to a supporting role for the day, but all combined to produce an excellent day&#8217;s birdwatching on the Northumberland coast \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Our fourth trip this week was a day birdwatching with Simon, who was back again after previous trips including a stunning Farne Deeps pelagic in 2012.\u00a0 We&#8217;d spoken in advance of the trip and Simon was keen to add a few of Northumberland&#8217;s wintering birds to his life list; divers, grebes, Purple Sandpiper and Brambling [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,5,141],"tags":[147,118,172,288,185,175,168,400,123,360,68,171,397,176,609,69,127,189,191,177,215,169,192,237,181,126],"class_list":["post-2251","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-birdwatching","category-northumberland","category-northumberland-coast","tag-bar-tailed-godwit","tag-brambling","tag-curlew","tag-dunlin","tag-gannet","tag-golden-plover","tag-goldeneye","tag-grey-plover","tag-lapwing","tag-little-grebe","tag-long-tailed-duck","tag-mallard","tag-marsh-harrier","tag-purple-sandpiper","tag-red-necked-grebe","tag-red-throated-diver","tag-reed-bunting","tag-shelduck","tag-skylark","tag-slavonian-grebe","tag-stonechat","tag-teal","tag-twite","tag-water-rail","tag-wigeon","tag-yellowhammer"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2251","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=2251"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2251\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2253,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2251\/revisions\/2253"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2251"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2251"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2251"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}