{"id":2369,"date":"2014-05-28T10:04:09","date_gmt":"2014-05-28T09:04:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/?p=2369"},"modified":"2014-05-28T10:04:09","modified_gmt":"2014-05-28T09:04:09","slug":"watching-bespoke-safari-25042014","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/birdwatching\/watching-bespoke-safari-25042014","title":{"rendered":"Watching; Bespoke Safari 25\/04\/2014"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The first part of the Bank Holiday weekend was a washout, with our scheduled <a href=\"http:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/tours.php?id=23\" target=\"_blank\">Dark Skies<\/a> event, for a Hen Party in Kielder, falling victim to the weather \ud83d\ude41 Sunday was a bespoke wildlife Safari for Claire and Sophie and, as I collected them from home in Gosforth, things were looking a bit more promising.\u00a0 Away inland we could see a lot of general murkiness, so we headed for the Northumberland coast &#8211; planning to drop down to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/tours.php?id=2\" target=\"_blank\">Druridge Bay<\/a> as the afternoon progressed.<\/p>\n<p>Glorious, yet chillingly breezy weather was waiting for us at Bamburgh and we watched <em><strong>Eider<\/strong> <\/em>and<em><strong> Common Scoter<\/strong><\/em> as they bobbed about in the swell.\u00a0 We checked the wake of very passing boat for any sign of <em><strong>Bottlenose Dolphins<\/strong><\/em>and continued south down the coast.\u00a0 <em><strong>Willow Warblers, Sedge Warblers, Reed Buntings <\/strong><\/em>and<em><strong>Whitethroats<\/strong><\/em> were singing all around and <em><strong>Little Grebes<\/strong><\/em> were diving for prey before bobbing back to the water&#8217;s surface.\u00a0 Our picnic stop featured <em><strong>Fulmars<\/strong> <\/em>arcing just above the clifftops a few metres away from us and a viewpoint over the River Wansbeck revealed lots and lots of ducklings; <em><strong>Gadwall, Mallard, Shelduck<\/strong><\/em> all had broods of between eight and eleven &#8211; although this prime source of <em><strong>Otter<\/strong> <\/em>food didn&#8217;t seem to have attracted the attention of any <em><strong>Otters<\/strong><\/em>.\u00a0 A <em><strong>Roe Deer<\/strong> <\/em>on the far bank appeared than quickly vanished again as it made it&#8217;s way through the bushes, and<em><strong> Swifts, Swallows, House Martins <\/strong><\/em>and<em><strong>Sand Martins<\/strong> <\/em>feasted on the buzzing clouds of insects overhead.\u00a0 As daylight faded we arrived at one site to find a <em><strong>Mallard<\/strong> <\/em>and a <em><strong>Grey Heron<\/strong><\/em> both staring intently into a hole that we&#8217;ve long suspected of being an <em><strong>Otter<\/strong> <\/em>holt.\u00a0 More <em><strong>Mallards<\/strong><\/em>, and the three of us, joined the staring contest but the adversary that eventually flushed the <em><strong>heron<\/strong><\/em>, and had the <em><strong>Mallards<\/strong> <\/em>waddling away at a rate of knots, remained unseen as <em><strong>bats<\/strong> <\/em>began flitting past our ears.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The first part of the Bank Holiday weekend was a washout, with our scheduled Dark Skies event, for a Hen Party in Kielder, falling victim to the weather \ud83d\ude41 Sunday was a bespoke wildlife Safari for Claire and Sophie and, as I collected them from home in Gosforth, things were looking a bit more promising.\u00a0 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,9,5,141],"tags":[619,330,67,149,122,170,283,232,171,837,66,218,227,189,217,233,234,213],"class_list":["post-2369","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-birdwatching","category-druridge","category-northumberland","category-northumberland-coast","tag-bats","tag-bottlenose-dolphin","tag-common-scoter","tag-eider","tag-fulmar","tag-gadwall","tag-grey-heron","tag-house-martin","tag-mallard","tag-otter","tag-roe-deer","tag-sand-martin","tag-sedge-warbler","tag-shelduck","tag-swallow","tag-swift","tag-whitethroat","tag-willow-warbler"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2369","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=2369"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2369\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2371,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2369\/revisions\/2371"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2369"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2369"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2369"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}