I know I may go on a bit about how wonderful Northumberland is but, even after more than 20 years living here, there are days when even I find it hard to believe just how good it can be…<\/p>\n
I collected Colin and Hazel from the hills above Budle Bay and we headed south along the coast for an afternoon and evening around Druridge Bay<\/a>.\u00a0 Colin was keen to improve his handling of his new dSLR, and they were also quite keen on searching for Otters<\/strong><\/em>.\u00a0 The afternoon started with some top quality birdwatching; A<\/strong><\/em>vocet, Black-tailed Godwit, Scaup, Common Snipe<\/strong><\/em> and Dunlin<\/strong><\/em> are all nice, but the standout bird was the Stilt Sandpiper<\/strong><\/em> that has been enjoying a tour of Cresswell and Druridge Pools over the last week.\u00a0 Arriving at our picnic spot just south of Cresswell, I mentioned that, with such good visibility and relatively calm seas, whales<\/strong><\/em> and dolphins<\/strong><\/em> are always a possibility, perhaps tempting fate to deal us a poor hand… A few minutes later I was scanning the sea out towards the horizon when I saw a splash.\u00a0 I raised my binoculars, to check that it wasn’t a distant boat, and there was another splash, and another, and another, then four together \ud83d\ude42\u00a0 As the synchronous breaching continued I trained the ‘scope on the area where the dolphins<\/strong><\/em> were, and was surprised to see that they were Bottlenose Dolphins<\/strong><\/em>.\u00a0 In early August, the default dolphin for the Druridge Bay coast is White-beaked Dolphin<\/strong><\/em>, and that’s the species we’ve been finding on our recent pelagic trips<\/a>, but this has been an extraordinary year so I shouldn’t be too surprised to have found myself showing Bottlenose Dolphins<\/strong><\/em> to our clients too \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n The evening continued with some very obliging birds in front of Colin’s camera; Common Snipe, Dunlin, Linnet, <\/strong><\/em>a flock of Starlings<\/strong><\/em> taking a bath and an assortment of wagtails<\/strong><\/em> then, as light levels began to fall, we switched our attention to the patient waiting game of looking for Otters,<\/strong><\/em>as flock after flock of Starlings<\/strong><\/em> flew towards their evening roost.\u00a0 Soon, we were watching the sleek, sinuous shape of an Otter<\/strong><\/em> as it hunted and fed.\u00a0 It passed out of sight for a few minutes, only to reappear and surface just in front of a second Otter<\/strong><\/em>!\u00a0 A third one was slightly further way from us and eventually we watched as one of them came straight towards us before disappearing behind the reeds.<\/p>\n The day isn’t over ’til it’s over though, and Northumberland’s wildlife provided one last moment of magic as a Tawny Owl<\/strong><\/em> was perched on the road sign outside Colin and Hazel’s holiday let at The Ducket \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I know I may go on a bit about how wonderful Northumberland is but, even after more than 20 years living here, there are days when even I find it hard to believe just how good it can be… I collected Colin and Hazel from the hills above Budle Bay and we headed south along […]<\/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],"tags":[40,242,330,373,288,256,140,837,536,318,161,555,78,841,552],"class_list":["post-2583","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-birdwatching","category-druridge","category-northumberland","tag-avocet","tag-black-tailed-godwit","tag-bottlenose-dolphin","tag-common-snipe","tag-dunlin","tag-grey-wagtail","tag-linnet","tag-otter","tag-pied-wagtail","tag-scaup","tag-starling","tag-stilt-sandpiper","tag-tawny-owl","tag-white-beaked-dolphin","tag-yellow-wagtail"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2583","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=2583"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2583\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2585,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2583\/revisions\/2585"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2583"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2583"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2583"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}