After a remarkably mild winter, Wednesday brought some weather with a bit of bite, the sort of day where you really need the wildlife to be performing at it’s best to take your mind off the conditions…<\/p>\n
I collected Katherine and Brenda from Church Point for an afternoon\/evening Otter Safari<\/a>, and we headed north up the coast through Druridge Bay<\/a>.\u00a0 Our first stop was looking very promising; Goosanders, Grey Herons, Avocets, Wigeon, Teal, Pintail, Mallard, Curlew, Lapwing, Dunlin, Bar-tailed Godwit, Redshank, Common Snipe, Turnstone<\/strong><\/em>…and a noticeable lack of birds in one corner of the pond \ud83d\ude42 Always the first sign we look for when searching for Otters<\/strong><\/em>, so I was confident that there was one moving around close by.\u00a0 It was looking so promising that I thought we should stay put and have lunch where we were.\u00a0 I went back to the car to fetch our soup and sandwiches and when I got back to the hide, less than 5mins later, I was greeted with “You’re not going to believe it, but there’s an Otter<\/strong> <\/em>just over there.”\u00a0 Sure enough, Brenda’s directions had me looking in exactly the spot where it next surfaced \ud83d\ude42\u00a0 After a few minutes it went out of sight, before reappearing 30mins later, spreading panic amongst the ducks<\/strong> <\/em>that were roosting at the water’s edge.\u00a0 Then, as mysteriously as it first appeared, it dived and didn’t resurface where it could be seen.<\/p>\n We headed on up the coast in conditions that were becoming less entertaining, with a brutal southeasterly wind that seemed to drive the cold and damp through every layer of clothing that could be mustered.\u00a0 Noisy Black-headed Gulls<\/strong><\/em> were dive-bombing Canada Geese<\/strong><\/em>, Little Grebes<\/strong><\/em> were just being their cute selves, Sand Martins<\/strong><\/em> swirled back and forth over the River Aln, Coot <\/strong><\/em>and <\/strong>Moorhen<\/strong><\/em> busied themselves around the reedbeds and Greenfinch, Chaffinch, Blackbird, Mistle Thrush, Woodpigeon, Collared Dove<\/strong><\/em> and Wren <\/strong><\/em>were all singing<\/strong>.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n Probably a more wintry day than any day out we had during the winter, enriched by the sleek, sinuous menace of the Otter<\/strong><\/em> \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" After a remarkably mild winter, Wednesday brought some weather with a bit of bite, the sort of day where you really need the wildlife to be performing at it’s best to take your mind off the conditions… I collected Katherine and Brenda from Church Point for an afternoon\/evening Otter Safari, and we headed north up […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,9,5,141],"tags":[40,271,133,560,102,157,373,270,288,75,283,360,171,146,198,837,179,358,218,169,359,181,158,421],"class_list":["post-2319","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-birdwatching","category-druridge","category-northumberland","category-northumberland-coast","tag-avocet","tag-black-headed-gull","tag-blackbird","tag-canada-goose","tag-chaffinch","tag-collared-dove","tag-common-snipe","tag-coot","tag-dunlin","tag-greenfinch","tag-grey-heron","tag-little-grebe","tag-mallard","tag-mistle-thrush","tag-moorhen","tag-otter","tag-pintail","tag-redshank","tag-sand-martin","tag-teal","tag-turnstone","tag-wigeon","tag-woodpigeon","tag-wren"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2319","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=2319"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2319\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2321,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2319\/revisions\/2321"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2319"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2319"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2319"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}