{"id":3217,"date":"2016-01-11T13:19:32","date_gmt":"2016-01-11T12:19:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/?p=3217"},"modified":"2016-01-11T13:19:32","modified_gmt":"2016-01-11T12:19:32","slug":"midwinter-mammal-magic-otter-and-squirrel-safari-10012016","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/northumberland\/druridge\/midwinter-mammal-magic-otter-and-squirrel-safari-10012016","title":{"rendered":"Midwinter mammal magic; Otter and Squirrel Safari 10\/01\/2016"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Trips with more than one target species can be tricky, particularly if the different targets don&#8217;t occur at the same sites as each other&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>I collected Lynn, Alan, Glynis and Michael from Swarland and we headed southeast towards <a href=\"http:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/tours.php?id=2\" target=\"_blank\">Druridge Bay<\/a>.\u00a0 The weather forecast promised showers and the first of those, accompanied by a bone-chilling breeze, hit just as we reached our first site. What didn&#8217;t mind the weather though were the two <em><strong>Otter<\/strong><\/em> cubs that we were soon watching \ud83d\ude42\u00a0 We watched them for 30 mins as they fed synchronously in turbulent water; drifting , diving, bobbing up like corks and, after coming very close to us, eventually drifting away when they heard a dog-walker shouting at her errant pet.\u00a0 A walk on the beach worked up an appetite for lunch and then we were off in search of our second target for the day.\u00a0 <em><strong>Chaffinch, Bullfinch, Coal Tit, Blue Tit, Great Tit<\/strong><\/em> and <em><strong>Great Spotted Woodpecker<\/strong><\/em> were all visiting feeding stations but in the icy breeze I wasn&#8217;t overly confident that we&#8217;d have any luck.\u00a0 Checking a different clump of trees proved the key though, and we soon found ourselves just a few metres away from an apparently unconcerned <em><strong>Red Squirrel<\/strong><\/em> \ud83d\ude42\u00a0 As dusk approached, <em><strong>Little Grebe, Goldeneye<\/strong><\/em> and <em><strong>Mute Swan<\/strong><\/em> were silhouetted against water turned pink by a stunning sunset, and <em><strong>Lapwings<\/strong><\/em> flew by like gigantic moths in the half light.<\/p>\n<p>Multi-mammal days are always fantastic.\u00a0 <a href=\"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/birdwatching\/on-the-trail-of-the-otter-and-then-some\" target=\"_blank\">Our one day record on a trip with clients<\/a> is 8 species, but there&#8217;ll surely come a day (probably during the summer when we can search for <em><strong>bats<\/strong><\/em> at the end of the day) when we hit double figures!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Trips with more than one target species can be tricky, particularly if the different targets don&#8217;t occur at the same sites as each other&#8230; I collected Lynn, Alan, Glynis and Michael from Swarland and we headed southeast towards Druridge Bay.\u00a0 The weather forecast promised showers and the first of those, accompanied by a bone-chilling breeze, [&hellip;]<\/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":[46,27,102,101,168,25,45,123,360,178,837,833],"class_list":["post-3217","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-druridge","category-otter","category-southeast-northumberland","tag-blue-tit","tag-bullfinch","tag-chaffinch","tag-coal-tit","tag-goldeneye","tag-great-spotted-woodpecker","tag-great-tit","tag-lapwing","tag-little-grebe","tag-mute-swan","tag-otter","tag-red-squirrel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3217","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=3217"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3217\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3219,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3217\/revisions\/3219"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3217"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3217"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3217"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}