{"id":2445,"date":"2014-06-25T12:07:17","date_gmt":"2014-06-25T11:07:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/?p=2445"},"modified":"2014-06-25T12:07:17","modified_gmt":"2014-06-25T11:07:17","slug":"putting-the-bite-on-bespoke-safari-20062014","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/birdwatching\/putting-the-bite-on-bespoke-safari-20062014","title":{"rendered":"Putting the bite on; Bespoke safari 20\/06\/2014"},"content":{"rendered":"

Some wildlife is popular with everyone, some isn’t popular with many people at all, and some, despite the best efforts of Springwatch\/Autumnwatch\/Winterwatch…<\/p>\n

I met up with Niel and Nicky at Church Point, and we set out on an exploration of Druridge Bay<\/a> and southeast Northumberland.\u00a0 Despite several incidents involving agitated ducks<\/strong><\/em>, indicating that they were worried about something in the reeds, we didn’t manage a sighting of any Otters<\/strong><\/em>.\u00a0 The typical quality birdwatching of the Northumberland coast in late June was still in evidence, with at least 5 Avocets<\/strong> <\/em>and 11 Little Gulls<\/strong><\/em> among the throng.\u00a0 A tiny Tufted Duck<\/strong><\/em> travelled back and forth across the water, in what appeared to be an unsuccessful search for it’s parents then, as the sun dropped towards the horizon, we headed to our regular Badger<\/strong> <\/em>site.<\/p>\n

Intriguingly, no Badgers<\/strong> <\/em>appeared – which is unusual at a site where we have a 95% success rate – but, as at least three Tawny Owls<\/strong><\/em> began penetrating the gloom with their eerie calls, the sharp alarms of Blackbird<\/strong><\/em>, Robin<\/strong> <\/em>and Song Thrush<\/strong><\/em> heralded the arrival of another mammal<\/strong> <\/em>that inhabits the darker parts of the day.\u00a0 Bloodthirsty killer of farmyard chickens, attempted abductor of babes from cribs in the south of England…whichever way you look at it the Red Fox<\/strong><\/em> gets a bad press…which sadly glosses over just what wonderful animals they are.\u00a0 Sleek, beautiful, playful…we watched as three adults trotted across the clearing in front of us.\u00a0 As Niel photographed one peering from the undergrowth (oh, for a Nikon D4!), I lifted my binoculars and realised that there were three small cubs chasing around too \ud83d\ude42\u00a0 Two of the adults, and the three cubs, disappeared along a track up the hill, and then the adults came out into the clearing again, presumably having tucked the kids up safely in bed.\u00a0 Pipistrelle<\/strong> <\/em>bats were flitting across our field of view as we conceded that our vision could no longer penetrate the enveloping dark.<\/p>\n

Love them or hate them, there’s no denying that foxes<\/strong> <\/em>have a real magic…a bit like Luis Suarez \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Some wildlife is popular with everyone, some isn’t popular with many people at all, and some, despite the best efforts of Springwatch\/Autumnwatch\/Winterwatch… I met up with Niel and Nicky at Church Point, and we set out on an exploration of Druridge Bay and southeast Northumberland.\u00a0 Despite several incidents involving agitated ducks, indicating that they were […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,9,5,139],"tags":[40,286,133,93,837,292,847,116,145,78,182],"class_list":["post-2445","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-birdwatching","category-druridge","category-northumberland","category-southeast-northumberland","tag-avocet","tag-badger","tag-blackbird","tag-little-gull","tag-otter","tag-pipistrelle","tag-red-fox","tag-robin","tag-song-thrush","tag-tawny-owl","tag-tufted-duck"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2445","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=2445"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2445\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2447,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2445\/revisions\/2447"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2445"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2445"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2445"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}