Tuesday saw Pete and Jan taking their 7th trip with NEWT, and as I got out of the car in Embleton to collect them it was ever so slightly breezy…<\/p>\n
When every bit of water you look at is whipped up into a froth by the wind, with dainty Little Gulls<\/strong><\/em> hanging in the wind and delicately dip-feeding, searching for Otters<\/strong><\/em> becomes particularly challenging and, despite Tufted Ducks<\/strong><\/em> and Great Crested Grebes<\/strong><\/em> staring intently at reedbeds, that we’ve seen Otters<\/strong><\/em> appear from in recent weeks, there was no sign of our target species for the afternoon.\u00a0 A really stiff breeze will frequently lead to reduced sightings of all wildlife, but the afternoon produced some impressive sightings…as we watched at least 10 adult Avocets<\/strong><\/em>, and four chicks, at Cresswell, alongside a summer-plumaged Sanderling<\/strong><\/em>, two huge birds appeared low over the dunes, battling into the wind.\u00a0 I gave my head a shake and looked through my binoculars again…and there were two Common Cranes<\/strong><\/em> \ud83d\ude42\u00a0 They slowly crossed the pond, lifted as a flock of Canada Geese<\/strong><\/em> took off beneath them, and were blown back towards the sea!\u00a0 Undeterred they continued their progress westwards, landed for a few minutes and then continued.\u00a0 I’d alerted a few local birdwatchers to their presence, including Ipin<\/a> as they were heading towards his house…and he soon had them as an impressive garden tick \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n I couldn’t imagine how the evening could get better…and then as dusk approached, I was scanning through binoculars and noticed a small bird that I couldn’t immediately identify.\u00a0 A quick switch to viewing through the ‘scope, and there was one of my favourite birds twirling on the water’s surface and darting at flies.\u00a0 Common Cranes<\/strong><\/em> may be huge and impressive, but Red-necked Phalarope<\/strong><\/em> is simply a breathtaking avian jewel \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n As we headed back to the car, the breeze had decreased in strength, but had also turned from quite warm to bone-chilling.\u00a0 A Barn Owl<\/strong><\/em> flew silently from a fence post, and the journey back to Embleton produced another one sitting on a post just a few metres away from us.<\/p>\n And with that wind, I’d been worried we wouldn’t see anything…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Tuesday saw Pete and Jan taking their 7th trip with NEWT, and as I got out of the car in Embleton to collect them it was ever so slightly breezy… When every bit of water you look at is whipped up into a froth by the wind, with dainty Little Gulls hanging in the wind […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,5,21,139],"tags":[40,97,560,201,488,93,576,80,182],"class_list":["post-2909","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-druridge","category-northumberland","category-otter","category-southeast-northumberland","tag-avocet","tag-barn-owl","tag-canada-goose","tag-common-crane","tag-great-crested-grebe","tag-little-gull","tag-red-necked-phalarope","tag-sanderling","tag-tufted-duck"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2909","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=2909"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2909\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2913,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2909\/revisions\/2913"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2909"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2909"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2909"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}