{"id":2701,"date":"2014-11-14T17:04:02","date_gmt":"2014-11-14T16:04:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/?p=2701"},"modified":"2014-11-14T17:04:02","modified_gmt":"2014-11-14T16:04:02","slug":"battling-the-elements-otter-safari-06112014","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/birdwatching\/battling-the-elements-otter-safari-06112014","title":{"rendered":"Battling the elements; Otter Safari 06\/11\/2014"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last Thursday was Sue’s second Otter Safari<\/a> with us this year, after an unsuccessful search in early July<\/a>…a trip that was followed by five consecutive successful Otter Safaris for other clients!\u00a0 I was really looking forward to this trip – Sue is great company and pleasure to be out birdwatching with – but the added pressure of already having one Otter Safari not produce our target species had me planning, re-planning and then planning some more…<\/p>\n

I’d got two sites lined up that I was confident would produce Otter<\/strong><\/em> sightings, but the one spanner in the works was the weather forecast.\u00a0 If it was accurate (and, as it turned out, it was) we’d got three hours of good weather, and four of poor, ahead of us.\u00a0 As I drove to Church Point, I was mulling over the options for the two sites, and decided to go with the one that’s been our most reliable this year during the good weather, and then head to the other one towards dusk.\u00a0 Then I thought about it again – would the reliable site, where I can usually predict to within a few metres where the Otter<\/strong><\/em> will first put in an appearance,\u00a0 be better in the poor weather just before dark?\u00a0 I decided to trust to my first instinct and we were soon watching over the water as the wind strengthened and the first drops of rain were carried towards us on the breeze.\u00a0 As Goldeneye<\/strong><\/em> and Cormorant<\/strong><\/em> dived in the ruffled water I noticed a dark shape in the corner of my field of vision.\u00a0 It might have been nothing, but I held my concentration on that spot and just over a minute later an Otter<\/strong><\/em> cub surfaced in front of us \ud83d\ude42\u00a0 Twisting, turning, porpoising, diving and feeding, it kept us entertained for 90 minutes before slipping out of sight as the next wave of raindrops stung our faces on the now howling wind.<\/p>\n

We retreated to the car and sat eating lunch overlooking the North Sea, as a distant speck heading towards us over the waves revealed itself to be a Blackbird<\/strong><\/em> that paused for a few minutes on the cliff face before continuing its migration inland.\u00a0 Then a Wheatear<\/strong><\/em> came ‘in-off’, and soon after that three Redwings<\/strong><\/em> arrived, following what must have been an arduous sea crossing, as the rain intensified.\u00a0 As dusk approached, and the rain somehow became even heavier, we watched flocks of Teal<\/strong><\/em> and Wigeon<\/strong><\/em>, Common Snipe<\/strong><\/em> and Dunlin<\/strong><\/em> probing in soft mud, Curlew<\/strong><\/em> appearing as if from out of nowhere, Starlings<\/strong><\/em> and Jackdaws<\/strong><\/em> heading to roost, and Blackbirds, Robins, Fieldfare<\/strong><\/em> and more Blackbirds<\/strong><\/em>, and more Blackbirds<\/strong><\/em> \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last Thursday was Sue’s second Otter Safari with us this year, after an unsuccessful search in early July…a trip that was followed by five consecutive successful Otter Safaris for other clients!\u00a0 I was really looking forward to this trip – Sue is great company and pleasure to be out birdwatching with – but the added […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,9,5,21],"tags":[133,373,372,172,288,168,382,837,22,161,169,235,181],"class_list":["post-2701","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-birdwatching","category-druridge","category-northumberland","category-otter","tag-blackbird","tag-common-snipe","tag-cormorant","tag-curlew","tag-dunlin","tag-goldeneye","tag-jackdaw","tag-otter","tag-redwing","tag-starling","tag-teal","tag-wheatear","tag-wigeon"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2701","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=2701"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2701\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2703,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2701\/revisions\/2703"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2701"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2701"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2701"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}