{"id":3239,"date":"2016-03-01T13:03:48","date_gmt":"2016-03-01T12:03:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/?p=3239"},"modified":"2016-03-01T13:03:48","modified_gmt":"2016-03-01T12:03:48","slug":"the-hunter-hunted-lindisfarne-safari-19022016","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/northumberland\/lindisfarne\/the-hunter-hunted-lindisfarne-safari-19022016","title":{"rendered":"The hunter, hunted; Lindisfarne Safari 19\/02\/2016"},"content":{"rendered":"

Our second successive day on and around Lindisfarne<\/a> was accompanied by an incredibly stiff breeze, which contributed to a fascinating encounter…<\/p>\n

I collected Andy, Jill and Catherine from The Swan<\/a> and we collected Alison en route to the north of the county.\u00a0 Waiting for the tide to clear from the causeway, we spent the first part of the day on the mainland.\u00a0 Bar-tailed Godwit, Oystercatcher, Purple Sandpiper, Turnstone, Curlew, Common Redshank<\/strong><\/em> and Knot<\/strong><\/em> were all close to the edge of the breaking surf as Long-tailed Duck, Common Scoter, Eider, Razorbill<\/strong><\/em> and Slavonian Grebe<\/strong><\/em> braved the icy bite of the wind out on the exposed sea.\u00a0 Teal, Wigeon, Pale-bellied Brent Geese<\/strong><\/em> and Dark-bellied Brent Geese<\/strong><\/em> grazed on the newly-exposed areas of mudflat as the tide fell and a stunningly handsome drake Pintail<\/strong><\/em> flew by.\u00a0 Grey Seals<\/strong><\/em> hauled out on exposed sandbars and, over on the island, we watched a Kestrel<\/strong><\/em>, holding position in the breeze, as another raptor found itself in a bit of difficulty…<\/p>\n

Between the island and the mainland, a Sparrowhawk<\/strong><\/em> was beating a desperate path into the wind.\u00a0 Struggling to make headway, its task was made all the more difficult by the attention of a Herring Gull<\/strong><\/em>.\u00a0 Exposed, and really not in its element, the Sparrowhawk<\/strong><\/em> was driven back by the wind as the mob of gulls<\/strong><\/em> began growing.\u00a0 Time and again it flew towards the mainland only to be brought almost to a standstill by the breeze and harassed by the gulls<\/strong><\/em> into turning back towards the island.\u00a0 Eventually it dropped towards the sea before accelerating across the gap, just a few feet above the deadly waves, and was lost from sight as it neared the relative sanctuary of the mainland.\u00a0 If there’s a rule when watching wildlife it should be ‘expect the unexpected’ \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Our second successive day on and around Lindisfarne was accompanied by an incredibly stiff breeze, which contributed to a fascinating encounter… I collected Andy, Jill and Catherine from The Swan and we collected Alison en route to the north of the county.\u00a0 Waiting for the tide to clear from the causeway, we spent 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":[10],"tags":[556,67,172,173,149,835,128,334,68,210,108,179,176,226,177,131,169,359,181],"class_list":["post-3239","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-lindisfarne","tag-common-redshank","tag-common-scoter","tag-curlew","tag-dark-bellied-brent-goose","tag-eider","tag-grey-seal","tag-kestrel","tag-knot","tag-long-tailed-duck","tag-oystercatcher","tag-pale-bellied-brent-goose","tag-pintail","tag-purple-sandpiper","tag-razorbill","tag-slavonian-grebe","tag-sparrowhawk","tag-teal","tag-turnstone","tag-wigeon"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3239","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=3239"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3239\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3243,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3239\/revisions\/3243"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3239"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3239"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3239"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}