{"id":3221,"date":"2016-02-01T12:21:50","date_gmt":"2016-02-01T11:21:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/?p=3221"},"modified":"2016-02-01T12:21:50","modified_gmt":"2016-02-01T11:21:50","slug":"between-the-storms-bespoke-otter-photography-31012016","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/northumberland\/druridge\/between-the-storms-bespoke-otter-photography-31012016","title":{"rendered":"Between the storms; Bespoke Otter Photography 31\/01\/2016"},"content":{"rendered":"

I collected Gill and Stuart from The Swan<\/a>, ahead of a day in search of photographable Otters<\/strong><\/em>, and the most noticeable thing was the gentle breeze and lack of rain\/sleet\/hail\/snow \ud83d\ude42\u00a0 Always a good start…<\/p>\n

After a morning of Treecreepers, Moorhen, Little Grebe, Long-tailed Tits<\/strong><\/em>, mirror-calm water, two separate incidents where Mallards, Mute Swans<\/strong><\/em> and Black-headed Gulls<\/strong><\/em> all gave an indication that they’d spotted a predator and lots of entertaining discussion about the ethics of wildlife photography (and the brilliance of the Nikon D810) we had lunch overlooking the remarkably calm North Sea, with a flock of Eider<\/strong><\/em> offshore and Fulmars<\/strong><\/em> arcing along the cliff tops.\u00a0 I’d seen two Otter<\/strong><\/em> cubs on Thursday, when I was getting in some recce work before the arrival of Storm Gertrude, so I’d already decided where we’d be spending the afternoon.\u00a0 Goldeneye<\/strong><\/em> and Little<\/strong><\/em> Grebe<\/strong><\/em> were sitting quietly on the water, a lone Little Egret<\/strong><\/em> was stalking through the shallows and Cormorants<\/strong><\/em>, those briefly convincing Otter<\/strong><\/em> lookalikes, were busy eating their way through plenty of small fish.\u00a0 Then, the change in behaviour I was looking for; Redshank<\/strong><\/em> scattered and Cormorants<\/strong><\/em> took off as if they’d rather be anywhere other than where they’d been feeding.\u00a0 Looking like a rock moving slowly through the shallow water the adult Otter<\/strong><\/em> was hunting, head and tail submerged and it’s impressive muscular torso above the water line \ud83d\ude42\u00a0 Then, much closer to us, an Otter<\/strong><\/em> cub diving persistently, crunching it’s prey each time it surfaced.\u00a0 Closer and closer, until it obligingly got out of the water in front of us.\u00a0 A second cub was slightly more distant, and we’d got three separate Otters<\/strong><\/em> in view as a Kingfisher<\/strong><\/em> treated us to repeated fly-bys on what seemed to be a regular feeding circuit.<\/p>\n

As Black-headed<\/strong><\/em> and Herring Gulls<\/strong><\/em> passed overhead in the rapidly deepening gloom of dusk and a strengthening cold breeze brought persistent drizzle we headed back to the car after nearly three hours with the Otters. <\/strong><\/em>You just don’t notice the cold and wet when you’re enjoying yourself \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I collected Gill and Stuart from The Swan, ahead of a day in search of photographable Otters, and the most noticeable thing was the gentle breeze and lack of rain\/sleet\/hail\/snow \ud83d\ude42\u00a0 Always a good start… After a morning of Treecreepers, Moorhen, Little Grebe, Long-tailed Tits, mirror-calm water, two separate incidents where Mallards, Mute Swans and […]<\/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":[271,221,556,372,122,168,143,120,243,360,121,171,198,178,837,338],"class_list":["post-3221","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-druridge","category-otter","tag-black-headed-gull","tag-common-eider","tag-common-redshank","tag-cormorant","tag-fulmar","tag-goldeneye","tag-herring-gull","tag-kingfisher","tag-little-egret","tag-little-grebe","tag-long-tailed-tit","tag-mallard","tag-moorhen","tag-mute-swan","tag-otter","tag-treecreeper"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3221","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=3221"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3221\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3223,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3221\/revisions\/3223"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3221"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3221"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3221"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}