Even after 40+ years birdwatching, there are times when I’m not sure whether the thing that excites me the most is a lone rarity, a life or death interaction involving one of the predators we encounter, or an impressive flock of something common…<\/p>\n
I collected David and Dot from Gosforth and we made our way across to the coast for a day of mid-November birdwatching.\u00a0 This proved to be a day of flocks; Pink-footed Geese<\/strong><\/em> rose then dropped in nearby fields, peppering the sky and cutting through the autumn air with their yapping calls.\u00a0 Mini-murmurations of\u00a0 Starlings<\/strong><\/em> twisted, turned, bunched and swirled, demonstrating that they don’t just reserve that spectacle for the fading light of evening.\u00a0 Common Snipe<\/strong><\/em> were sitting in the vegetation close to the water’s edge, extraordinarily well camouflaged when asleep and only really betraying their presence once they woke up and started probing in the soft mud of the shallows.\u00a0 Oystercatcher, Turnstone, Redshank, Curlew<\/strong><\/em> and Eider<\/strong><\/em> are almost a given on the coast in the winter, a lone Sanderling<\/strong><\/em> hurried back and forth in a flock of Ringed Plover<\/strong><\/em> and Teal, Wigeon<\/strong><\/em> and Goldeneye<\/strong><\/em> are eyecatching whether in flocks or alone.\u00a0 Elegant Pintail<\/strong><\/em> glided by and Stonechats<\/strong><\/em> flicked their tails nervously perched in the tops of bushes in the dunes along the coast.\u00a0 One isolated tree brought a memorable spectacle, with a charm of Goldfinches<\/strong><\/em>, and a lone Greenfinch<\/strong><\/em>.\u00a0 For a couple of years now, a lot of our clients have reported increasing numbers of Goldfinch<\/strong><\/em>, and a tremendous decrease in Greenfinch<\/strong><\/em>.\u00a0 No matter how numerous Goldfinch<\/strong><\/em> become, it’s hard to imagine that we could ever become blase about them; strikingly patterned, with their red face, black and white head and yellow wing flashes, and with liquid, twittering songs and calls, they really are quite charming \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Even after 40+ years birdwatching, there are times when I’m not sure whether the thing that excites me the most is a lone rarity, a life or death interaction involving one of the predators we encounter, or an impressive flock of something common… I collected David and Dot from Gosforth and we made our way […]<\/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":[373,172,149,168,103,75,210,392,179,358,224,80,161,215,169,359,181],"class_list":["post-2705","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-birdwatching","category-druridge","category-northumberland","category-northumberland-coast","tag-common-snipe","tag-curlew","tag-eider","tag-goldeneye","tag-goldfinch","tag-greenfinch","tag-oystercatcher","tag-pink-footed-geese","tag-pintail","tag-redshank","tag-ringed-plover","tag-sanderling","tag-starling","tag-stonechat","tag-teal","tag-turnstone","tag-wigeon"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2705","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=2705"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2705\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2707,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2705\/revisions\/2707"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2705"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2705"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2705"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}