{"id":3261,"date":"2016-03-27T18:52:33","date_gmt":"2016-03-27T17:52:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/?p=3261"},"modified":"2016-03-27T18:52:33","modified_gmt":"2016-03-27T17:52:33","slug":"or-maybe-not-otter-mini-safari-270316","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/northumberland\/druridge\/or-maybe-not-otter-mini-safari-270316","title":{"rendered":"…or maybe not; Otter mini-Safari 27\/03\/16"},"content":{"rendered":"

After Friday’s lovely weather, it was almost too much to hope that the weekend would stay like that…<\/p>\n

I arrived at Church Point to collect Jeanette and Simon, Liz and Simon & Gareth and Chris and we set off on a tour of southeast Northumberland<\/a> in search of Otters<\/strong><\/em>.\u00a0 As we arrived at our first site the raindrops began to pepper the car windscreen but were short lived.\u00a0 The next 3 hours brought a remarkable range of weather conditions; bright warm sunshine, heavy cloud, heavy rain, glowering skies and a brutal biting wind.\u00a0 Oystercatcher, Redshank, Cormorant, Mute Swan<\/strong><\/em> and Mallard<\/strong><\/em> were all braving the elements at our first site, but there was no sign of the elusive mustelid<\/strong><\/em> that we were seeking.\u00a0 We moved on and watched more wildlife in the grip of the breeze; Tufted Duck, Wigeon, Teal, Mallard, Gadwall, Red-breasted Merganser, Greylag Goose, Goldeneye, Great Crested Grebe, Lapwing, Sand Martin<\/strong><\/em> and a Grey Heron<\/strong><\/em> which had to contend with the elements as well as the unwelcome attention of a persistent mob of Black-headed Gulls<\/strong><\/em>.<\/p>\n

Things weren’t looking promising; all of the birds seemed calm and bitingly cold winds often make finding Otters<\/strong><\/em> a tricky task.\u00a0 Another scan of the pool and there was a pair of Great Crested Grebes<\/strong><\/em> looking agitated…as an Otter<\/strong><\/em> cub surfaced in front of them \ud83d\ude42\u00a0 It surfaced and dived in the choppy water for a couple of minutes and then vanished, with all of the assembled waterfowl returning to feeding and drifting back into the area they’d vacated when the Otter<\/strong><\/em> was there.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

After Friday’s lovely weather, it was almost too much to hope that the weekend would stay like that… I arrived at Church Point to collect Jeanette and Simon, Liz and Simon & Gareth and Chris and we set off on a tour of southeast Northumberland in search of Otters.\u00a0 As we arrived at our 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":[271,372,170,168,488,283,190,123,171,178,837,210,188,358,218,169,182,181],"class_list":["post-3261","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-druridge","category-otter","category-southeast-northumberland","tag-black-headed-gull","tag-cormorant","tag-gadwall","tag-goldeneye","tag-great-crested-grebe","tag-grey-heron","tag-greylag-goose","tag-lapwing","tag-mallard","tag-mute-swan","tag-otter","tag-oystercatcher","tag-red-breasted-merganser","tag-redshank","tag-sand-martin","tag-teal","tag-tufted-duck","tag-wigeon"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3261","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=3261"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3261\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3263,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3261\/revisions\/3263"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3261"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3261"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3261"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}