{"id":2361,"date":"2014-05-23T16:53:52","date_gmt":"2014-05-23T15:53:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/?p=2361"},"modified":"2014-05-23T16:53:52","modified_gmt":"2014-05-23T15:53:52","slug":"damp-dark-woodland-badger-safari-17052014","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/northumberland\/damp-dark-woodland-badger-safari-17052014","title":{"rendered":"Damp, dark woodland; Badger safari 17\/05\/2014"},"content":{"rendered":"

During Thursday’s Otter Safari<\/a>, we were chatting about the different mammals that can be encountered in Northumberland and Albert asked whether we had many Badgers<\/strong> <\/em>in Northumberland.\u00a0 I described their distribution, and how we go about finding and watching them, and before the evening was finished we’d arranged a Badger<\/strong> <\/em>mini-safari for Saturday.<\/p>\n

On my way to collect Albert and Elisabeth I was listening to commentary on the FA Cup final and suffered the heartbreak of Aaron Ramsey’s extra time winner for Arsenal (there’s a big cat, not found in Northumberland, that’s very close to my heart!).\u00a0 We made our way to our regular Badger<\/strong> <\/em>site, and settled into position.\u00a0 Song Thrushes, Blackbirds, Robins <\/strong><\/em>andWrens<\/strong><\/em> were all calling as daylight faded, and then the Tawny Owls<\/strong><\/em> started hooting and ‘ke-wick’ ing.\u00a0 At one point there were at least three owls<\/strong> <\/em>calling, including one close to our spot, and one perched tantalisingly hidden in the canopy high overhead.\u00a0 As on so many of our Badger<\/strong> <\/em>trips, the first mammals to appear were Red Foxes<\/strong><\/em> – with an adult and two cubs running about on the hillside opposite us, occasionally pausing to stare across the valley with gloom-piercing eyes.\u00a0 One Badger<\/strong> <\/em>appeared as well; probably the largest that I’ve ever seen, running along the same track that the foxes had been on, before making it’s way along a trail through the vegetation and into the gloom.<\/p>\n

Sitting with clients who have a real appreciation of mammals, on a damp woodland floor, as daylight fades and the world becomes one of owls, foxes, badgers<\/strong><\/em> and inexplicable noises, is one of my favourite things…and for a few hours it even took my mind off ‘that’ goal \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

During Thursday’s Otter Safari, we were chatting about the different mammals that can be encountered in Northumberland and Albert asked whether we had many Badgers in Northumberland.\u00a0 I described their distribution, and how we go about finding and watching them, and before the evening was finished we’d arranged a Badger mini-safari for Saturday. On my […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[287,5,139],"tags":[286,133,847,116,145,78,421],"class_list":["post-2361","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-badger-wildlife","category-northumberland","category-southeast-northumberland","tag-badger","tag-blackbird","tag-red-fox","tag-robin","tag-song-thrush","tag-tawny-owl","tag-wren"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2361","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=2361"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2361\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2363,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2361\/revisions\/2363"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2361"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2361"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2361"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}