{"id":3033,"date":"2015-07-20T15:27:57","date_gmt":"2015-07-20T14:27:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/?p=3033"},"modified":"2015-07-20T15:27:57","modified_gmt":"2015-07-20T14:27:57","slug":"eight-year-itch-otter-safari-18072015","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/northumberland\/druridge\/eight-year-itch-otter-safari-18072015","title":{"rendered":"Eight year itch; Otter Safari 18\/07\/2015"},"content":{"rendered":"

It’s always a pleasure when clients who haven’t met before get on so well with each other.\u00a0 Of course they always have a shared interest in wildlife, and other shared interests feature regularly (camping, walking and cycling in particular), and long quests in search of an elusive species soon become a talking point…<\/p>\n

I arrived at Church Point for an afternoon\/evening search for Otters<\/a>, and quickly met up with John, then Lucy, Matt and Graham and finally Kate.\u00a0 Conversation quickly turned to Otters<\/strong><\/em>, and the pressure was ramped up when Kate revealed that her attempts to see an Otter<\/strong><\/em> had stretched over several holidays…and eight years \ud83d\ude42\u00a0 Conditions weren’t promising – a howling wind that was tossing Starlings<\/strong><\/em> and Lapwings<\/strong><\/em> around and a male Marsh Harrier<\/strong><\/em> was battling into the breeze, almost at a standstill.\u00a0 Whitecaps on a pond is never a situation that fills me with joy on an Otter safari, and we continued checking all of the likely locations.\u00a0 Mediterranean Gull, Avocet, Knot, Black-tailed Godwit, Little Egret, Grey Heron, Common Sandpiper, Dunlin, Little Grebe<\/strong><\/em> and Yellow Wagtail<\/strong><\/em> were all added to the bird list for the day, Kate spotted a Red Fox<\/strong><\/em> creeping into the reeds, but there was still no sign of the sinuous predator.\u00a0 Early evening, the conditions changed \ud83d\ude42\u00a0 The wind died off and the sea was suddenly very calm, so much so that we were able to enjoy watching Harbour Porpoises<\/strong><\/em> from our picnic spot.\u00a0 Things were looking up…<\/p>\n

We settled into position at the site where I’d planned to spend the last couple of hours of daylight, enjoying a chat with Cain, then the day suddenly got really interesting.\u00a0 First a Barn Owl<\/strong><\/em>, white death on silent wings, ghosted by just a few metres away from us.\u00a0 I concentrated on an area of water with very few birds on it – often a good indication that there’s something the birds are unhappy about.\u00a0 Scan left to right – two Little Grebes<\/strong><\/em> sleeping, scan right to left – two Little Grebes<\/strong><\/em> sleeping, scan left to right – three Little Grebes<\/strong><\/em> sleeping?\u00a0 The third Little Grebe<\/strong><\/em> didn’t look quite right…which wasn’t a surprise as it was an Otter<\/strong><\/em> with just it’s nose sticking up through the blanket of weed on the water’s surface \ud83d\ude42\u00a0 A quick text to Cain and he joined us again, and the Otter<\/strong><\/em> entertained us for an hour.\u00a0 Emotional at seeing her first Otter<\/strong><\/em>, Kate still grabbed her camera, pointed it down the eyepiece of our ‘scope and started filming it \ud83d\ude42\u00a0 The magic continued, as a Long-eared Owl<\/strong><\/em> flew around the edge of the bushes in front of us before perching on a fence post, baleful orange eyes staring at us.\u00a0 Then a second Otter<\/strong><\/em> swam across in front of us, while the first one was still hunting in the darkening gloom and the eeirie cries of Curlew<\/strong><\/em> coming to roost cut through the chill evening air.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It’s always a pleasure when clients who haven’t met before get on so well with each other.\u00a0 Of course they always have a shared interest in wildlife, and other shared interests feature regularly (camping, walking and cycling in particular), and long quests in search of an elusive species soon become a talking point… I arrived […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,21],"tags":[40,97,242,214,172,288,283,240,334,123,243,360,174,397,193,837,847,552],"class_list":["post-3033","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-druridge","category-otter","tag-avocet","tag-barn-owl","tag-black-tailed-godwit","tag-common-sandpiper","tag-curlew","tag-dunlin","tag-grey-heron","tag-harbour-porpoise","tag-knot","tag-lapwing","tag-little-egret","tag-little-grebe","tag-long-eared-owl","tag-marsh-harrier","tag-mediterranean-gull","tag-otter","tag-red-fox","tag-yellow-wagtail"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3033","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=3033"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3033\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3035,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3033\/revisions\/3035"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3033"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3033"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3033"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}