Yesterday continued to lay to rest the myth that February is a quiet month…<\/p>\n
Starting in the north of the county, overlooking the iconic landscape of Holy Island<\/a>, brought the expected waders and wildfowl, and three lifers for Paul and Katie, who were back for another day out with us, following a trip in 2009<\/a>; Common Scoter, Long-tailed Duck <\/strong><\/em>and <\/strong>Twite<\/strong><\/em>. A Peregrine<\/strong><\/em> muscled its way menacingly through the air above a flock of Dunlin<\/strong><\/em>, Grey Seals<\/strong><\/em> were ‘bottling’ at high tide and Bar-tailed Godwits, Redshank <\/strong><\/em>and<\/strong> Curlew<\/strong><\/em> were probing the soft exposed mud as the tide began to drop.\u00a0 Eider<\/strong><\/em>, Shelduck, Red-throated Divers, Wigeon <\/strong><\/em>and <\/strong>Teal<\/strong><\/em> were all at or near the water’s edge and the songs of Skylark <\/strong><\/em>and <\/strong>Yellowhammer<\/strong><\/em> reverberated in the warm sunshine.\u00a0 Perhaps the highlight of the morning was a bird that is always breathtaking; sailing elegantly into the stiff breeze, a male Hen Harrier<\/strong><\/em> was tracking along a hedgerow heading inland \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n The afternoon brought Paul and Katie’s fourth lifer of the day, a Red-necked Grebe, <\/strong><\/em>with <\/strong>Little, Great Crested <\/strong><\/em>and <\/strong>Slavonian Grebes<\/strong><\/em> all close by for comparison.\u00a0 Two Avocets<\/strong> <\/em>were rather unseasonal, a pair of Pintail<\/strong> <\/em>exuded elegance, drake Goldeneye<\/strong> <\/em>looked very smart in their contrasty breeding plumage, Red-breasted Mergansers<\/em> <\/strong>looked quite, well, comical as they always do and two Brown Hares<\/strong><\/em> were sitting motionless in a nearby field.\u00a0 With 30 minutes until sunset a small flock of Starlings<\/strong> <\/em>flying in from the north led to me suggesting that we go and see where they’d gone, and to check if there was going to a significant murmuration…<\/p>\n What followed was, quite simply, one of the most remarkable things I’ve ever witnessed.\u00a0 Initially the Starlings<\/strong> <\/em>were about a mile south of where I expected them to roost, and there were a lot of them.\u00a0 Soon two other large flocks merged with them and they moved slowly north, eventually passing directly overhead with the sound of wingbeats like a gentle breeze rustling through a forest.\u00a0 The murmuration drifted away to the south again, then back north.\u00a0 Almost an hour had passed when the activity levels within the flock were ramped up.\u00a0 Twisting and turning with more urgency, the density of birds in different parts of our view coalesced to form writhing shapes from the previously uniform oval.\u00a0 With light levels fading, the birds vanished from sight, only to betray their presence in a series of shapes that resembled a slug, then a snail, then a car.\u00a0 We soon lost them in the gloom again, only for the finale to the evenings proceedings to take us all by surprise as the flock compacted over the reedbed where they were going to roost, forming a dense arrowhead as they funneled into the reeds.\u00a0 With the first birds down in the reedbed, the rest of the flock wheeled slightly higher, then repeated the maneuver, a second arrowhead driving into the reeds.\u00a0 A third, then a fourth, cohort entered the roost and all was quiet.\u00a0 Fade to black…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Yesterday continued to lay to rest the myth that February is a quiet month… Starting in the north of the county, overlooking the iconic landscape of Holy Island, brought the expected waders and wildfowl, and three lifers for Paul and Katie, who were back for another day out with us, following a trip in 2009; […]<\/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":[40,147,57,67,172,288,149,488,835,839,360,68,55,176,188,609,69,358,189,191,177,161,169,192,181,126],"class_list":["post-2255","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-birdwatching","category-northumberland","category-northumberland-coast","tag-avocet","tag-bar-tailed-godwit","tag-brown-hare","tag-common-scoter","tag-curlew","tag-dunlin","tag-eider","tag-great-crested-grebe","tag-grey-seal","tag-hen-harrier","tag-little-grebe","tag-long-tailed-duck","tag-peregrine","tag-purple-sandpiper","tag-red-breasted-merganser","tag-red-necked-grebe","tag-red-throated-diver","tag-redshank","tag-shelduck","tag-skylark","tag-slavonian-grebe","tag-starling","tag-teal","tag-twite","tag-wigeon","tag-yellowhammer"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2255","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=2255"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2255\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2259,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2255\/revisions\/2259"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2255"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2255"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2255"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}