You’ll probably be familiar with the concept of ‘pyramid of numbers’, but there’s a loop in that pyramid and I spend a lot of my time\u00a0 on the wrong end of it…<\/p>\n
I collected Boyd and Louise from Newton and we headed south along the Northumberland coast to search around our favourite Otter<\/strong> <\/em>sites.\u00a0 Ducks<\/strong> <\/em>were staring intently at one reedbed (where we suspect an Otter<\/strong> <\/em>has been resting regularly over the last few weeks) as clouds of midges<\/strong> <\/em>(extremely numerous) were predated by Swallows<\/strong><\/em>, House Martins<\/strong><\/em> and Sand Martins<\/strong><\/em> (not so numerous).\u00a0 A thick carpet of insects<\/strong> <\/em>(extremely numerous) trapped in the surface of a river were greedily gobbled up by shoals of small fish<\/strong> <\/em>(not so numerous).\u00a0 With the setting sun illuminating it from behind like an avenging angel, a Barn Owl<\/strong><\/em> (scarce) plunged repeatedly into the rank vegetation before emerging with a small mammal<\/strong> <\/em>(not at all scarce).\u00a0 Example after example that typify the pyramid of numbers…<\/p>\n …but, of course, there’s that loop I mentioned before.\u00a0 Midges<\/strong> <\/em>(numerous almost beyond measure) munching away merrily on me<\/strong> <\/em>(really not numerous) \ud83d\ude41\u00a0 I don’t know what attraction I hold for these tiny menaces, but there clearly is one.\u00a0 I’ve been bitten in March, well before any self-respecting midge should be on the wing, and my latest bite in any year was on November 4th.\u00a0 I sat on a heather covered hillside one day, watching a Hen Harrier<\/strong><\/em> nest, attracting a veritable plague of Horseflies <\/strong><\/em>in the process, and on a camping trip in 2006, Sarah erected our tent while I, and these are Sarah’s words rather than mine “rolled around on the grass, crying like a little girl”.\u00a0 A few years ago, during the Q&A session at the end of a talk I’d given, we were asked the question “How do you avoid being bitten by insects”.\u00a0 Without a moment’s hesitation, Sarah provided the answer “I stand next to Martin” \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" You’ll probably be familiar with the concept of ‘pyramid of numbers’, but there’s a loop in that pyramid and I spend a lot of my time\u00a0 on the wrong end of it… I collected Boyd and Louise from Newton and we headed south along the Northumberland coast to search around our favourite Otter sites.\u00a0 Ducks […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,5,139],"tags":[97,839,637,232,837,218,217],"class_list":["post-2449","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-druridge","category-northumberland","category-southeast-northumberland","tag-barn-owl","tag-hen-harrier","tag-horsefly","tag-house-martin","tag-otter","tag-sand-martin","tag-swallow"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2449","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=2449"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2449\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2451,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2449\/revisions\/2451"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2449"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2449"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2449"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}