{"id":2453,"date":"2014-07-01T09:16:03","date_gmt":"2014-07-01T08:16:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/?p=2453"},"modified":"2014-07-01T09:16:03","modified_gmt":"2014-07-01T08:16:03","slug":"a-game-of-two-halves-farne-islands-safari-24062014","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/birdwatching\/a-game-of-two-halves-farne-islands-safari-24062014","title":{"rendered":"A game of two halves; Farne Islands Safari 24\/06\/2014"},"content":{"rendered":"

Even when you can see inclement weather ahead of you, there’s usually a light at the end of the tunnel \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n

I collected Stephen from home in North Shields, and then Peter from his holiday cottage at Eshott, and we headed north towards the Northumberland coast and the Farne Islands<\/a>, our destination for the afternoon.\u00a0 The first half of the day was planned to be a walk along the coast from High Newton, but the deteriorating weather made that an unwelcoming prospect and instead we had a ‘car as a hide’ morning of birdwatching.\u00a0 A Spoonbill<\/strong> <\/em>in Budle Bay<\/strong> was an unexpected find and the eerie calls of Grey Seals<\/strong><\/em> carried through the mist and drizzle across the low-tide mudflats.<\/p>\n

Then the light at the end of the tunnel appeared, well not so much a light as an incandescent ball of wildlife magic.\u00a0 We were eating lunch, and looking forward to the journey across to the islands, when Peter said “They look like dolphins<\/strong> <\/em>off the end of the rocks”.\u00a0 I lifted my binoculars and the view was filled with Bottlenose Dolphins<\/strong><\/em> \ud83d\ude42\u00a0 We watched as they passed close to the shore, then they settled and began feeding between Bamburgh Castle<\/strong> and Inner Farne<\/strong>.\u00a0 A quick text to William meant that, by the time we arrived at the harbour, all of his skippers knew where the dolphins<\/strong> <\/em>were and our journey across to the islands included several minutes with them bow-riding our boat.\u00a0 I’ve been studying this group of dolphins for the last three months, and some inital findings are in MARINElife’s press release<\/a>.\u00a0 Following a cruise around the islands, we landed on Inner Farne<\/strong>.\u00a0 One of the wardens mentioned that the Bridled Tern<\/strong><\/em> had been seen, and a quick sacn soon revealed it’s location in amongst the roosting Arctic<\/strong><\/em>, Common<\/strong> <\/em>and Sandwich Terns<\/strong><\/em>.\u00a0 Here are a few pictures of this stunning seabird from last year on Inner Farne<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"Bridled<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Bridled<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Bridled<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Bridled<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Bridled<\/a><\/p>\n

After an hour amongst the Guillemots, Kittiwakes, Fulmars, Shags<\/strong><\/em> and terns<\/strong><\/em>, we crossed back to the mainland and headed south.\u00a0 Miserable morning, magical afternoon \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Even when you can see inclement weather ahead of you, there’s usually a light at the end of the tunnel \ud83d\ude42 I collected Stephen from home in North Shields, and then Peter from his holiday cottage at Eshott, and we headed north towards the Northumberland coast and the Farne Islands, our destination for the afternoon.\u00a0 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,11,5,141],"tags":[230,330,577,229,122,835,186,301,225,226,223,377,398],"class_list":["post-2453","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-birdwatching","category-farnes","category-northumberland","category-northumberland-coast","tag-arctic-tern","tag-bottlenose-dolphin","tag-bridled-tern","tag-common-tern","tag-fulmar","tag-grey-seal","tag-guillemot","tag-kittiwake","tag-puffin","tag-razorbill","tag-sandwich-tern","tag-shag","tag-spoonbill"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2453","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=2453"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2453\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2457,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2453\/revisions\/2457"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2453"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2453"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2453"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}