{"id":2655,"date":"2014-10-15T16:46:45","date_gmt":"2014-10-15T15:46:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/?p=2655"},"modified":"2014-10-15T16:46:45","modified_gmt":"2014-10-15T15:46:45","slug":"halcyon-days-otter-safari-13102014","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/birdwatching\/halcyon-days-otter-safari-13102014","title":{"rendered":"Halcyon Days; Otter Safari 13\/10\/2014"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Monday was a day around <a href=\"http:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/tours.php?id=2\" target=\"_blank\">Druridge Bay<\/a> and the southeast Northumberland coast, and an extraordinary contrast with Sunday&#8217;s summery weather&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>I collected Trish and Carol from Dunstan and we headed south along the coast.\u00a0 <em><strong>Kingfisher<\/strong><\/em> is always a spectacular sight, and one flew under a bridge beneath our feet, adding a touch of sparkle to a day that was developing into cold, windy and gloomy.\u00a0 <em><strong>Ducks<\/strong><\/em> are, for the most part, out of eclipse plumage now and <em><strong>Wigeon, Teal, Tufted Duck<\/strong><\/em> and <em><strong>Gadwall<\/strong><\/em> were all looking resplendent.\u00a0 <em><strong>Little Grebes<\/strong><\/em> were engaged in non-stop fish catching, <em><strong>Curlew<\/strong><\/em> flew noisily by and a <em><strong>Little Egret<\/strong><\/em> was stalking elegantly along the River Coquet.\u00a0 We were joined for the latter part of the day by Michael and Fiona and we settled into position to search for <em><strong>Otters<\/strong><\/em>.\u00a0 In such gloomy windy conditions even my eternal optimism was dampened slightly, and although there were occasional panicky moments among the <em><strong>ducks<\/strong><\/em>, which included a beautifully elegant <em><strong>Pintail<\/strong><\/em>, the enigmatic predator didn&#8217;t put in an appearance.\u00a0 What we did get though was a <em><strong>Starling<\/strong><\/em> murmuration so close we could hear the wingbeats, thousands and thousands of <em><strong>Pink-footed Geese<\/strong><\/em> flying to roost and flock after flock of <em><strong>Golden Plover<\/strong><\/em> and <em><strong>Lapwing<\/strong><\/em> appearing out of the gloom of the dusk sky and dropping into nearby fields.\u00a0 Dusk is still my favourite time of the day, and if you&#8217;ve never experienced it surrounded by wildlife you really should give it a go, even the common birds are transformed by numbers and there&#8217;s always the chance of a mammal or two \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Monday was a day around Druridge Bay and the southeast Northumberland coast, and an extraordinary contrast with Sunday&#8217;s summery weather&#8230; I collected Trish and Carol from Dunstan and we headed south along the coast.\u00a0 Kingfisher is always a spectacular sight, and one flew under a bridge beneath our feet, adding a touch of sparkle to [&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":[172,170,175,236,120,123,243,360,837,129,179,269,161,169,182,181],"class_list":["post-2655","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-birdwatching","category-druridge","category-northumberland","category-northumberland-coast","tag-curlew","tag-gadwall","tag-golden-plover","tag-heron","tag-kingfisher","tag-lapwing","tag-little-egret","tag-little-grebe","tag-otter","tag-pink-footed-goose","tag-pintail","tag-shoveler","tag-starling","tag-teal","tag-tufted-duck","tag-wigeon"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2655","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=2655"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2655\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2657,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2655\/revisions\/2657"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2655"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2655"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2655"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}