{"id":3157,"date":"2015-11-23T12:26:45","date_gmt":"2015-11-23T11:26:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/?p=3157"},"modified":"2015-11-23T12:26:45","modified_gmt":"2015-11-23T11:26:45","slug":"northerlies-otter-safari-21112015","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/northumberland\/druridge\/northerlies-otter-safari-21112015","title":{"rendered":"Northerlies; Otter Safari 21\/11\/2015"},"content":{"rendered":"

Approaching Scots Gap, to collect Teresa, Lisa, Scott and Brett for an Otter Safari<\/a> around Druridge Bay<\/a>, the overnight snow made the road ‘interesting’ in places.\u00a0 The icy fingers of the northerly wind probed and poked at exposed skin and we headed down towards the coast…<\/p>\n

Just a few miles along the road we came across a big flock of Fieldfare<\/strong><\/em> and Redwing<\/strong><\/em>, those beautiful Scandinavian thrushes, and ahead of us we could see snow falling on the coast.\u00a0 Incredibly, apart from a light flurry of snow at Druridge Pools, it stayed away for the rest of the day.\u00a0 Mallard, Teal, Wigeon, Goldeneye, Gadwall, Tufted Duck, Goosander, Red-breasted Merganser, Coot<\/strong><\/em> and Little Grebe<\/strong><\/em> were all braving the choppy water, as Redshank, Oystercatcher<\/strong><\/em> and Curlew<\/strong><\/em> all probed the gooey mud along the water’s edge as the biting wind dug deeper and we resembled the images of early antarctic expeditions.\u00a0 Out of the wind, the low single figure temperatures didn’t feel so bad, and…was that something diving close to the reflection of the sun?\u00a0 Choppy water and dazzling reflected sunlight aren’t a great combination, but a dark shape surfaced – and there was our first Otter<\/strong><\/em> for the day \ud83d\ude42\u00a0 It dived and resurfaced, this time with another young Otter<\/strong><\/em> alongside it, and we watched them on and off for an hour before they disappeared in the direction of the setting sun.\u00a0 A Kingfisher<\/strong><\/em>, iridescent blue in the gloom of a waterside bush, and Little Egrets<\/strong><\/em>, seemingly luminous against the dark mud, caught tiny fish as we headed back inland under a stunning starry sky.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Approaching Scots Gap, to collect Teresa, Lisa, Scott and Brett for an Otter Safari around Druridge Bay, the overnight snow made the road ‘interesting’ in places.\u00a0 The icy fingers of the northerly wind probed and poked at exposed skin and we headed down towards the coast… Just a few miles along the road we came […]<\/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":[270,172,170,168,378,120,243,360,171,837,210,188,358,169,182,181],"class_list":["post-3157","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-druridge","category-otter","tag-coot","tag-curlew","tag-gadwall","tag-goldeneye","tag-goosander","tag-kingfisher","tag-little-egret","tag-little-grebe","tag-mallard","tag-otter","tag-oystercatcher","tag-red-breasted-merganser","tag-redshank","tag-teal","tag-tufted-duck","tag-wigeon"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3157","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=3157"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3157\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3159,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3157\/revisions\/3159"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3157"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3157"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3157"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}