04\/01\/2008, and NEWT’s first ever day out with clients was a strange, cold, gloomy day where we managed to find our target species for the day, Roe Deer.\u00a0 Eight years on and I found myself out with clients on January 4th again…<\/p>\n
As I arrived at Church Point to collect Roberta and Dougie, the first thing that struck me was the height of the waves crashing into Newbiggin Bay.\u00a0 Then the icy cold wind started probing, although it couldn’t breach the layers of clothing I’d aligned against it.\u00a0 Whichever direction you looked, the weather looked different; a patch of blue sky, sunlight trying to break through the clouds, distant rain…all possibilities seemed open as we headed down the coast.\u00a0 Greylag Geese, Tufted Duck, Mallard, Gadwall, Teal, Coot, Moorhen<\/strong><\/em> and a lone Lapwing<\/strong><\/em> braved the cold as the first rain shower of the day made the water’s surface dance.\u00a0 Next came what all agreed was the highlight of the day as Goldeneye<\/strong><\/em> and Little Grebe<\/strong><\/em> drifted apart and the space between them was occupied by an Otter<\/strong><\/em> \ud83d\ude42\u00a0 With a 75% success rate on our Otter Safaris<\/a> during 2015 it wasn’t suprising that 2016 started with such an obliging mustelid which came closer and closer before drifting away and feeding incessantly.<\/p>\n Lunch overlooking the North Sea brought Fulmars<\/strong><\/em> arcing effortlessly along the cliff tops, a very obliging Little Gull<\/strong><\/em> looked tiny alongside Black-headed Gulls<\/strong><\/em> and the wader and wildfowl list for the day continued to grow with Wigeon, Red-breasted Merganser, Scaup, Pochard, Pink-footed Goose, Dunlin, Ruff, Redshank, Curlew, Golden Plover<\/strong><\/em> and Long-billed Dowitcher<\/strong><\/em>.\u00a0 A very vocal Fieldfare<\/strong><\/em> gave remarkably confiding views, Goldfinch<\/strong><\/em> and Tree Sparrow<\/strong><\/em> jostled for position on feeders and, as the wind strengthened, waves crashed on the shore with a roar reminiscent of heavy traffic and the rain showers intensified, we headed back to Church Point.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" 04\/01\/2008, and NEWT’s first ever day out with clients was a strange, cold, gloomy day where we managed to find our target species for the day, Roe Deer.\u00a0 Eight years on and I found myself out with clients on January 4th again… As I arrived at Church Point to collect Roberta and Dougie, the first […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,21,139],"tags":[271,556,270,172,288,23,122,170,175,168,103,190,123,360,93,755,171,198,837,129,420,188,241,318,169,125,182,181],"class_list":["post-3211","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-druridge","category-otter","category-southeast-northumberland","tag-black-headed-gull","tag-common-redshank","tag-coot","tag-curlew","tag-dunlin","tag-fieldfare","tag-fulmar","tag-gadwall","tag-golden-plover","tag-goldeneye","tag-goldfinch","tag-greylag-goose","tag-lapwing","tag-little-grebe","tag-little-gull","tag-long-billed-dowitcher","tag-mallard","tag-moorhen","tag-otter","tag-pink-footed-goose","tag-pochard","tag-red-breasted-merganser","tag-ruff","tag-scaup","tag-teal","tag-tree-sparrow","tag-tufted-duck","tag-wigeon"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3211","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=3211"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3211\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3213,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3211\/revisions\/3213"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3211"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3211"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3211"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}