{"id":2877,"date":"2015-05-01T15:14:27","date_gmt":"2015-05-01T14:14:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/?p=2877"},"modified":"2015-05-01T15:14:27","modified_gmt":"2015-05-01T14:14:27","slug":"the-lek-bespoke-north-pennines-safari-26042015","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/northumberland\/pennines\/the-lek-bespoke-north-pennines-safari-26042015","title":{"rendered":"The Lek; Bespoke North Pennines Safari 26\/04\/2015"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Sunday 03:00 and the insistent beeping of the alarm tells me that it&#8217;s time to be up and out, to collect <a href=\"http:\/\/underthesamuelhood.blogspot.co.uk\" target=\"_blank\">Sam<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/killybirder.blogspot.co.uk\" target=\"_blank\">Brian<\/a>.\u00a0 Two cancelled <a href=\"http:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/tours.php?id=10\" target=\"_blank\">Kielder<\/a> trips, due to &#8216;adverse&#8217; weather conditions, led them to suggest that we switch our attentions back to the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/tours.php?id=12\" target=\"_blank\">North Pennines<\/a>, where we&#8217;d had a successful early start just over a year ago.\u00a0 Brian has written an excellent blog post about the day, which started with sunshine and ended with hail, and you can <a href=\"http:\/\/killybirder.blogspot.co.uk\/2015\/04\/norhtern-pennines-and-black-grouse-et-al.html\" target=\"_blank\">read his account here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Once again the <em><strong>Black Grouse<\/strong><\/em> performed beyond expectation.\u00a0 At least 29 <em><strong>Blackcock<\/strong><\/em> were lekking and a minimum of 14 <em><strong>Greyhens<\/strong><\/em> were in and around the lek.\u00a0 Subsequently we found two <em><strong>Blackcock<\/strong><\/em> lekking individually, each perched atop a small mound, apparently without any other <em><strong>grouse<\/strong><\/em> nearby.\u00a0 Back at the main lek, a major point of interest was the behaviour of the adult males towards a younger bird.\u00a0 Each time he appeared in the lek, the older, more experienced, birds broke off their attention from each other and pursued him until he flew off.\u00a0 Time and time he came back, each time getting the same treatment.\u00a0 The NGB (Next Generation Blackcock) upstart seemed undeterred by, perhaps even relishing the attention of, the beating he was taking from the experienced birds at the lek as they pranced, pouted, cooed and squared off against each other.\u00a0 Wildlife&#8217;s an odd thing sometimes, but always fascinating to watch \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Sunday 03:00 and the insistent beeping of the alarm tells me that it&#8217;s time to be up and out, to collect Sam and Brian.\u00a0 Two cancelled Kielder trips, due to &#8216;adverse&#8217; weather conditions, led them to suggest that we switch our attentions back to the North Pennines, where we&#8217;d had a successful early start just [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[54],"class_list":["post-2877","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-pennines","tag-black-grouse"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2877","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=2877"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2877\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2881,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2877\/revisions\/2881"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2877"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2877"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2877"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}