{"id":2837,"date":"2015-04-14T11:37:01","date_gmt":"2015-04-14T10:37:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/?p=2837"},"modified":"2015-04-14T11:42:48","modified_gmt":"2015-04-14T10:42:48","slug":"i-really-love-otters-bespoke-otter-safari-10-11042015","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/northumberland\/druridge\/i-really-love-otters-bespoke-otter-safari-10-11042015","title":{"rendered":"“I really love otters”; Bespoke Otter Safari 10-11\/04\/2015"},"content":{"rendered":"

Friday and Saturday saw a two day bespoke safari for Fran and Georgia, arranged by their mum back in early December.<\/p>\n

I collected the girls from The Swan<\/a> and we headed towards Druridge Bay<\/a>.\u00a0 We weren’t too far along the road when Georgia asked if we’d seen any Otters<\/strong><\/em> recently.\u00a0 I told them about Thursday’s sightings<\/a>, and there was an obvious raising of excitement levels in the car…and, with typical wildlife unpredictability, we managed to get right through Friday without an Otter<\/strong><\/em> sighting \ud83d\ude41\u00a0 Dippers<\/strong><\/em> zipping back and forth along the River Blyth were entertaining, a drake Garganey<\/strong><\/em> on the Wansbeck was stunning, Little Egrets<\/strong><\/em> and Avocets<\/strong><\/em> were elegant, but of the sinuous stealthy predator there was no sign.\u00a0 We returned to The Swan and I started revising our plans for Saturday…<\/p>\n

Saturday 05:00 and I stumble sleepily to the bathroom.\u00a0 There’s one thing I really don’t want to hear, and that’s a howling gale.\u00a0 This wasn’t looking promising; our plan for the day was a Seal Cruise around the Farne Islands<\/a>, and then more time searching for Otters, <\/strong><\/em>and neither of those would be helped by the hoolie that I could hear whistling through the trees in our garden.\u00a0 We arrived in Seahouses for our sailing on Glad Tidings V, and the sea was looking ever so slightly lumpy.\u00a0 We did manage to sail though, and were rewarded with Cormorant, Shag, Guillemot, Eider, Kittiwake<\/strong><\/em> and the two stars of the morning – Puffin<\/strong><\/em> and Grey Seal<\/strong><\/em>.\u00a0 Back on dry land we resumed the search for Otters<\/strong><\/em>, and the wind strengthened so that we could hear an eerie whistling around trees, bridges and us!\u00a0 With a wind chill factor taking temperatures down to bone-chilling, and a hail storm pinging ice off our heads, we were having to suffer for our wildlife…and still no Otters<\/strong><\/em>.\u00a0 Sarah was out and about checking other locations and sending regular texts to let me know where she’d checked.\u00a0 Our final backup plan was an 06:00 start on Sunday, but I don’t think anyone was really too keen on that idea.<\/p>\n

18:30 and the wind shifted from west to southwest and weakened slightly, the sun came out and I started to feel more optimistic.\u00a0 I had one decision left to make though, and that was which of our two options for sunset to go for…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Friday and Saturday saw a two day bespoke safari for Fran and Georgia, arranged by their mum back in early December. I collected the girls from The Swan and we headed towards Druridge Bay.\u00a0 We weren’t too far along the road when Georgia asked if we’d seen any Otters recently.\u00a0 I told them about Thursday’s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,11,139],"tags":[40,372,257,149,212,835,256,186,301,243,837,225,377],"class_list":["post-2837","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-druridge","category-farnes","category-southeast-northumberland","tag-avocet","tag-cormorant","tag-dipper","tag-eider","tag-garganey","tag-grey-seal","tag-grey-wagtail","tag-guillemot","tag-kittiwake","tag-little-egret","tag-otter","tag-puffin","tag-shag"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2837","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=2837"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2837\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2843,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2837\/revisions\/2843"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2837"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2837"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2837"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}