{"id":2823,"date":"2015-04-09T16:51:49","date_gmt":"2015-04-09T15:51:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/?p=2823"},"modified":"2015-04-09T16:51:49","modified_gmt":"2015-04-09T15:51:49","slug":"springtime-on-the-coast-otter-safari-08042015","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/northumberland\/druridge\/springtime-on-the-coast-otter-safari-08042015","title":{"rendered":"Springtime on the coast; Otter Safari 08\/04\/2015"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The lack of summer visitors has been commented on by local birdwatchers for the last couple of weeks, but there are signs that the summer is on its way&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>I collected Sam and Linda from <a href=\"http:\/\/www.westacrehouse.co.uk\" target=\"_blank\">West Acre House<\/a> and we headed towards the coast, thankfully free of the sea fret that hampered Monday&#8217;s trip.\u00a0 All of our <em><strong>Otter<\/strong><\/em> sites were very quiet on the <em><strong>mustelid<\/strong><\/em> front, but birdwatching is starting to pick up.\u00a0 A male <em><strong>Marsh Harrier<\/strong><\/em>, and no less than three female <em><strong>harriers<\/strong><\/em> nest-building, was a fantastic start to the morning.\u00a0 <em><strong>Chiffchaff, Chaffinch<\/strong><\/em> and <em><strong>Robin<\/strong><\/em> were all singing, <em><strong>Little Egrets<\/strong><\/em> were keeping up their recent record of putting in an appearance on our tours, a song-flighting <em><strong>Meadow Pipit<\/strong><\/em> settled obligingly close to us, <em><strong>Skylarks<\/strong><\/em> were soaring and singing high overhead, <em><strong>Little<\/strong><\/em> and <em><strong>Great Crested Grebes<\/strong><\/em> may be at opposite ends of the size spectrum but both are quite beautiful, <em><strong>Curlew<\/strong><\/em> and <em><strong>Redshank<\/strong><\/em> were digging in the mud, <em><strong>Goldeneye<\/strong><\/em> were displaying their golden eyes in the bright sunshine and <em><strong>Gadwall, Mallard<\/strong><\/em> and <em><strong>Tufted Duck<\/strong><\/em> were all caught in two minds between feeding and courting.\u00a0 15 <em><strong>Avocet<\/strong><\/em> were radiating elegance and the day had passed so quickly.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The lack of summer visitors has been commented on by local birdwatchers for the last couple of weeks, but there are signs that the summer is on its way&#8230; I collected Sam and Linda from West Acre House and we headed towards the coast, thankfully free of the sea fret that hampered Monday&#8217;s trip.\u00a0 All [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,21],"tags":[40,102,268,172,170,168,488,360,171,397,207,358,116,191,182],"class_list":["post-2823","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-druridge","category-otter","tag-avocet","tag-chaffinch","tag-chiffchaff","tag-curlew","tag-gadwall","tag-goldeneye","tag-great-crested-grebe","tag-little-grebe","tag-mallard","tag-marsh-harrier","tag-meadow-pipit","tag-redshank","tag-robin","tag-skylark","tag-tufted-duck"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2823","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=2823"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2823\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2825,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2823\/revisions\/2825"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2823"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2823"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2823"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}