There are some species that are favourites with particular clients, there are others that may be fairly common but still have good wildlife experience appeal, and then there are a select few that have everybody watching their every move…<\/p>\n
I arrived at Church Point and quickly located Carol, Dave, Megan and Emily.\u00a0 Our carload was soon complete with the arrival of Mr and Mrs Robertson and we headed north along the Northumberland coast.\u00a0 Our aim for the afternoon was to visit several Otter<\/strong> <\/em>sites, in the hope of catching sight of the elusive sinuous predator.\u00a0 Cold and windy isn’t an ideal weather condition for the search and it turned out that the closest we came (probably) was a sudden panic and ducks<\/strong> <\/em>heading purposefully away from a reedbed, and an unseen menace.\u00a0 Throughout the afternoon and evening there was plenty of avian interest; male Ruff<\/strong><\/em>, part way to breeding plumage, Grey Herons<\/strong><\/em>, stalking menacingly along the waters edge, Little Grebes<\/strong><\/em>, diving before surfacing with tiny fish, the cartoon-like Goosanders<\/strong> <\/em>and Red-breasted Mergansers<\/strong><\/em>, noisy Greylag<\/strong> <\/em>and Canada Geese<\/strong><\/em> and delicate, dainty Avocets<\/strong><\/em>, suddenly transformed into a furious vision of Hell when a female Marsh Harrier<\/strong><\/em> drifted foolishly over their pond.\u00a0 As dark descended, Moorhens<\/strong> <\/em>were making their way along the river side and Emily demonstrated remarkable hearing, picking out the squeaking of a shrew<\/strong> <\/em>in the bankside vegetation. Eerie mammalian screeching from the woodland on the other side of the river was probably an altercation between Red Foxes<\/strong><\/em> as the last remnants of daylight gave way to the dark.<\/p>\n The moment that had everyone’s attention focused came at sunset, in beautiful light.\u00a0 We were almost back at the car when I spotted a familiar shape hovering above the dunes.\u00a0 It dipped out of sight, before lifting from the grasses and heading towards us.\u00a0 It dipped again, then perched on a fencepost before resuming the hunt.\u00a0 Subtly coloured with mesmerising black eyes that are quite unforgettable the ‘Ghost Owl’, ‘Death Owl’, ‘Hushwing’ or simply Barn Owl<\/strong><\/em> has a rich folklore and really is one of those select few species that you’ll never tire of watching \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" There are some species that are favourites with particular clients, there are others that may be fairly common but still have good wildlife experience appeal, and then there are a select few that have everybody watching their every move… I arrived at Church Point and quickly located Carol, Dave, Megan and Emily.\u00a0 Our carload was […]<\/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":[40,97,560,378,283,190,397,198,837,847,188,241,615],"class_list":["post-2345","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-birdwatching","category-druridge","category-northumberland","category-northumberland-coast","tag-avocet","tag-barn-owl","tag-canada-goose","tag-goosander","tag-grey-heron","tag-greylag-goose","tag-marsh-harrier","tag-moorhen","tag-otter","tag-red-fox","tag-red-breasted-merganser","tag-ruff","tag-shrew"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2345","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=2345"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2345\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2347,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2345\/revisions\/2347"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2345"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2345"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2345"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}