{"id":2891,"date":"2015-05-22T08:25:46","date_gmt":"2015-05-22T07:25:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/?p=2891"},"modified":"2015-05-22T08:26:04","modified_gmt":"2015-05-22T07:26:04","slug":"a-hailstorm-of-quality-cheviots-pretige-tour-19052015","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/northumberland\/cheviot-valleys\/a-hailstorm-of-quality-cheviots-pretige-tour-19052015","title":{"rendered":"A hailstorm of quality; Cheviots Prestige Tour 19\/05\/2015"},"content":{"rendered":"

As I arrived at Spindrift<\/a> to collect David and Margaret for their second trip with NEWT, following a day in the North Pennines<\/a> in 2013, I was thinking about how to structure the rest of the day.\u00a0 The weather forecast suggested that there would be heavy showers by early afternoon, so I thought it would make sense to do a longer walk before then, and check sites that we could park near as the afternoon wore on and the weather deteriorated…<\/p>\n

One of the main target species for our trips into the Cheviot Valleys<\/a> is Ring Ouzel<\/strong><\/em>, so hearing a male in full song as you get out of the car is always a good start \ud83d\ude42\u00a0 He was singing from a dry stone wall, as his mate hopped around on the grass below and a second pair of ouzels<\/strong><\/em> flew over calling.\u00a0 A pair of Whinchats<\/strong><\/em> were on a heather covered hillside where a Red Grouse<\/strong><\/em> was sunning herself, as Grey Wagtails<\/strong><\/em> and Dippers<\/strong><\/em> bobbed up and down on midstream rocks, the buzzing song of a Common Redpoll<\/strong><\/em> revealed the presence of this attractive finch overhead and a Tree Pipit<\/strong><\/em> parachuted down from the sky.\u00a0 A few spots of rain soon cleared to give much brighter conditions and Common Buzzards<\/strong><\/em> soared and lazily hovered over the valley tops as a Cuckoo<\/strong><\/em> called persistently but remained hidden from view.\u00a0 Then the sky started to darken and a few drops of rain quickly turned into a heavy hailstorm with rumbling thunder adding to the extraordinary atmospheric conditions.\u00a0 The hailstorm moved away down the valley and we made our way back to the car, stopping to admire a male Ring Ouzel<\/strong><\/em> feeding only 30m away from us, in a field rendered white with hail.\u00a0 Common Sandpipers<\/strong><\/em> bobbed along the stream edge and more Common Buzzards<\/strong><\/em> soared against the steep sides of the valley.<\/p>\n

There were two species that David and Margaret were both very keen to see during the day, and I thought I knew just the place for them.\u00a0 So, in mid-afternoon we found ourselves in a beautiful, atmospheric area of woodland…marvelling at the beauty of a pair of Common Redstarts<\/strong><\/em> and watching a mating pair of Pied Flycatchers<\/strong><\/em>, with all four birds in the same tree at one point \ud83d\ude42\u00a0 As we headed back to Seahouses, we could see some impressive storms in every direction, so I suspected I might have a challenging drive back home at the end of the day…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As I arrived at Spindrift to collect David and Margaret for their second trip with NEWT, following a day in the North Pennines in 2013, I was thinking about how to structure the rest of the day.\u00a0 The weather forecast suggested that there would be heavy showers by early afternoon, so I thought it would […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[148,725,374,214,264,257,256,723,208,263,258,262],"class_list":["post-2891","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cheviot-valleys","tag-common-buzzard","tag-common-redpoll","tag-common-redstart","tag-common-sandpiper","tag-cuckoo","tag-dipper","tag-grey-wagtail","tag-pied-flycatcher","tag-red-grouse","tag-ring-ouzel","tag-tree-pipit","tag-whinchat"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2891","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=2891"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2891\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2897,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2891\/revisions\/2897"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2891"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2891"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2891"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}