{"id":2959,"date":"2015-06-26T15:27:52","date_gmt":"2015-06-26T14:27:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/?p=2959"},"modified":"2015-06-26T15:27:52","modified_gmt":"2015-06-26T14:27:52","slug":"slugs-and-snails-and-dolphin-tails-druridge-bay-safari-25062015","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/northumberland\/slugs-and-snails-and-dolphin-tails-druridge-bay-safari-25062015","title":{"rendered":"Slugs and snails and dolphin tails; Druridge Bay Safari 25\/06\/2015"},"content":{"rendered":"

As I drove to Newton to collect Sue and Julian, the first few raindrops hit the windscreen of the car.\u00a0 My optimism that the rain would soon pass over was drenched, literally, by a torrential downpour that the windscreen wipers couldn’t cope with and which sounded like I was in a tin can being pelted with stones \ud83d\ude41\u00a0 We set off for Bamburgh, completely surrounded by storms and found a flock of Common Scoter<\/strong><\/em> and Eider<\/strong><\/em> on the sea, and a miserable looking Puffin<\/strong><\/em> on the beach.\u00a0 The rainfall left the air warm and humid, so as the afternoon passed into evening paths were covered in slugs<\/strong><\/em> and snails<\/strong><\/em>.\u00a0 Common Toad<\/strong><\/em> and Common Frog<\/strong><\/em> crossed our path too, and the air was alive with small insects – and a good handful of Common Pipistrelles<\/strong><\/em> hunting them.\u00a0 A Fox <\/strong><\/em>trotted along the edge of Cresswell Pond, where Avocets<\/strong><\/em> and Black-Tailed Godwit<\/strong><\/em> were roosting and feeding.\u00a0 A male Marsh Harrier<\/strong><\/em> flew by, causing consternation amongst the Swallows<\/strong><\/em>, and Tufted Duck<\/strong><\/em> and Red-breasted Merganser<\/strong><\/em> both looked elegant as Mute Swans<\/strong><\/em> and Shelduck<\/strong><\/em> watched carefully over their young.\u00a0 A Whitethroat<\/strong><\/em> sang from rank vegetation just a few metres away from us, and dusk brought Swallows, Sand Martins<\/strong><\/em> and Starlings<\/strong><\/em> to roost.<\/p>\n

The day will remain in the memory for years to come though, as a pod of dolphins put on a remarkable display.\u00a0 We’d just finished our picnic and I decided to have one last scan before heading up the coast.\u00a0 Top Tip – always have ‘one last scan’ \ud83d\ude42\u00a0 Close inshore I saw a small group of dolphins<\/strong><\/em> breaking the surface. White-beaked Dolphin<\/strong><\/em> should be here in a few days time, but these were big, dark animals and we soon confirmed that they were B<\/strong>ottlenose Dolphin<\/strong><\/em>.\u00a0 Now, these are big impressive animals, and we spent nearly 40mins watching at least 12 of them as they slowly travelled north.\u00a0 They weren’t just travelling though; synchronous breaching, tail-slapping, lob-tailing, spy-hopping, flipper waving and fighting continued as they passed by our viewpoint and eventually out of sight away to the north.\u00a0 I’ve spent a lot of time watching dolphins, both with clients<\/a> and when carrying out offshore surveys, but I’ve never seen a group of dolphins so animated as these were.\u00a0 Wonder if they’ll be there for this evening’s pelagic trip \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As I drove to Newton to collect Sue and Julian, the first few raindrops hit the windscreen of the car.\u00a0 My optimism that the rain would soon pass over was drenched, literally, by a torrential downpour that the windscreen wipers couldn’t cope with and which sounded like I was in a tin can being pelted […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[109,9,5],"tags":[330,319,250,67,62,593,149,185,360,397,178,225,188,218,161,217,182,841],"class_list":["post-2959","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bamburgh-castle","category-druridge","category-northumberland","tag-bottlenose-dolphin","tag-common-frog","tag-common-pipistrelle","tag-common-scoter","tag-common-toad","tag-common-whitethroat","tag-eider","tag-gannet","tag-little-grebe","tag-marsh-harrier","tag-mute-swan","tag-puffin","tag-red-breasted-merganser","tag-sand-martin","tag-starling","tag-swallow","tag-tufted-duck","tag-white-beaked-dolphin"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2959","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=2959"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2959\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2961,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2959\/revisions\/2961"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2959"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2959"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2959"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}