{"id":2901,"date":"2015-05-28T11:06:11","date_gmt":"2015-05-28T10:06:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/?p=2901"},"modified":"2015-05-28T11:06:11","modified_gmt":"2015-05-28T10:06:11","slug":"feeding-frenzy-farne-islands-safari-26052015","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/northumberland\/farnes\/feeding-frenzy-farne-islands-safari-26052015","title":{"rendered":"Feeding frenzy; Farne Islands Safari 26\/05\/2015"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tuesday was our first landing trip to the Farne Islands<\/a> this year, with the breeding season well underway for some species, and only just getting started for others.<\/p>\n

I collected Sally, Ian, Ben and Hannah from Waren Mill (you’d be surprised at how well hidden a holiday cottage can be in such a small village…) and we headed up the coast towards Holy Island<\/a> for the first part of our day out, soon encountering Sparrowhawk, Kestrel<\/strong><\/em> and Common Buzzard<\/strong><\/em>.\u00a0 Grey Seals<\/strong><\/em> were ‘bottling’ offshore, Whitethroat<\/strong><\/em> were singing their scratchy warble from the tops of hawthorn bushes, Brown Hares<\/strong><\/em> were chasing each other in and out of dense crops and a group of Sandwich Terns<\/strong><\/em> feeding close to the shore were joined by a single Little Tern<\/strong><\/em>.<\/p>\n

After lunch it was time to head across to the islands, onboard Glad Tidings IV, and we soon had lines of Guillemots<\/strong><\/em> flying past, Gannets<\/strong><\/em> soaring effortlessly by, Puffins<\/strong><\/em> on the water close to the boat, Ben and Hannah spotting jellyfish<\/strong><\/em> in the clear still water and the extraordinary experience of the cliffs on Staple Island, up close and personal with the sight, sound, and smell of a seabird colony.\u00a0 Kittiwakes, Guillemots, Razorbills<\/strong><\/em> and Shags<\/strong><\/em> may be the staple (sorry, please excuse the pun!) fare of the islands precipitous cliffs, and Grey Seals<\/strong><\/em> always grab the attention of everyone on board, but the highlight for many of our clients over the last seven and a half years has been landing on Inner Farne.\u00a0 Female Common Eiders<\/strong><\/em>, easily overlooked as they sit quietly on their nests, are remarkably approachable and Puffins<\/strong><\/em> are a firm favourite, particularly with clients who are taking photographs, but there’s little to compare with being dive-bombed by an angry Arctic Tern<\/strong><\/em> \ud83d\ude42\u00a0 Ben had his camera with him, so we spent a while watching the behaviour of the Puffins<\/strong><\/em>, determining what they were about to do just before they did it (the secret to great wildlife photography…) and Ben was soon taking some impressive flight shots as birds flew back towards their burrows after fishing forays out to sea.\u00a0 After returning to the mainland, passing dense groups of terns<\/strong><\/em> and Kittiwakes<\/strong><\/em> as they plunged into shoals of small fish, we spent some time scanning the mudflats of Budle Bay, as Eiders<\/strong><\/em> with ducklings swan along the Waren Burn and Curlew<\/strong><\/em> probed in the soft gooey mud.<\/p>\n

Always an impressive day out – we’ve lived up here for over 20 years and still marvel at the stunning wildlife spectacle of a trip to the Farnes each time we head across there.\u00a0 It’s Thursday now, so we’d like to say “Happy Birthday Hannah” \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Tuesday was our first landing trip to the Farne Islands this year, with the breeding season well underway for some species, and only just getting started for others. I collected Sally, Ian, Ben and Hannah from Waren Mill (you’d be surprised at how well hidden a holiday cottage can be in such a small village…) […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[230,57,148,540,229,172,149,185,835,128,301,476,225,226,223,131,234],"class_list":["post-2901","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-farnes","tag-arctic-tern","tag-brown-hare","tag-common-buzzard","tag-common-guillemot","tag-common-tern","tag-curlew","tag-eider","tag-gannet","tag-grey-seal","tag-kestrel","tag-kittiwake","tag-little-tern","tag-puffin","tag-razorbill","tag-sandwich-tern","tag-sparrowhawk","tag-whitethroat"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2901","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=2901"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2901\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2903,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2901\/revisions\/2903"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2901"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2901"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2901"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}