{"id":2681,"date":"2014-11-03T11:47:20","date_gmt":"2014-11-03T10:47:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/?p=2681"},"modified":"2014-11-03T11:47:20","modified_gmt":"2014-11-03T10:47:20","slug":"wild-goose-chase-bespoke-birdwatching-30102014","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/birdwatching\/wild-goose-chase-bespoke-birdwatching-30102014","title":{"rendered":"Wild Goose chase; Bespoke Birdwatching 30\/10\/2014"},"content":{"rendered":"

Thursday was Pete and Janet’s 6th trip with NEWT, and the dismal, gloomy, drizzly south easterly weather as I drove to Embleton seemed ever so slightly promising \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n

We started around Druridge Bay<\/a>, checking a small area of woodland close to the coast, and soon encountered one of my favourite passerines, with three Brambling<\/strong><\/em> feeding quietly high in the canopy and two more flying over noisily.\u00a0 Everywhere we went there were Robins<\/strong><\/em> and Blackbirds<\/strong><\/em>, although little sign of any other migrants other than a large flock of Redwing<\/strong><\/em> over Cresswell and a flock of Fieldfare<\/strong><\/em> near Beadnell.\u00a0 Leaping Salmon<\/strong><\/em> on the River Coquet provided a lot of entertainment and a Cormorant<\/strong><\/em> which had been catching small fish, dived, causing a large Salmon<\/strong><\/em> to leap clear of the water.\u00a0 The fish splashed back down and the Cormorant<\/strong><\/em> surfaced, gripping it behind the gills.\u00a0 As the bird drifted downstream with its catch, we couldn’t believe that it would be able to deal with such a large fish…then it manouvered it so that the fish’s head was pointing down it’s throat and swallowed it whole!<\/p>\n

As dusk approached, we were on the coast near Holy Island<\/a>.\u00a0 Little Egrets, Grey Plover, Curlew<\/strong><\/em> and Redshank<\/strong><\/em> were on the mudflats and the high yapping sound of Pink-footed Geese<\/strong><\/em> could be heard distantly.\u00a0 Skein after skein appeared against the dark clouds overhead, settling close to the oncoming tide.\u00a0 Then more, and more, and more…thousands and thousands of geese<\/strong><\/em>, still arriving when it was so dark that they were just a slightly darker speckling against an almost featureless backdrop.\u00a0 Finally, as we headed back to the car, the ‘teu-it’ call of a Spotted Redshank<\/strong><\/em> cut through the gloom as the geese continued to arrive.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Thursday was Pete and Janet’s 6th trip with NEWT, and the dismal, gloomy, drizzly south easterly weather as I drove to Embleton seemed ever so slightly promising \ud83d\ude42 We started around Druridge Bay, checking a small area of woodland close to the coast, and soon encountered one of my favourite passerines, with three Brambling feeding […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,9,119,29,141],"tags":[133,118,372,172,23,400,243,129,358,22,116,412,357],"class_list":["post-2681","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-birdwatching","category-druridge","category-holy-island","category-natural-history","category-northumberland-coast","tag-blackbird","tag-brambling","tag-cormorant","tag-curlew","tag-fieldfare","tag-grey-plover","tag-little-egret","tag-pink-footed-goose","tag-redshank","tag-redwing","tag-robin","tag-salmon","tag-spotted-redshank"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2681","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=2681"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2681\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2683,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2681\/revisions\/2683"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2681"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2681"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2681"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}