{"id":3277,"date":"2016-04-11T12:16:08","date_gmt":"2016-04-11T11:16:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/?p=3277"},"modified":"2016-04-11T12:16:08","modified_gmt":"2016-04-11T11:16:08","slug":"hidden-otter-mini-safari-09042016","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/northumberland\/druridge\/hidden-otter-mini-safari-09042016","title":{"rendered":"Hidden; Otter mini-Safari 09\/04\/2016"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The best thing about wildife, and at the same time occasionally the most frustrating thing, is that you can&#8217;t ever predict exactly what it&#8217;s going to do&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>I collected Jeff and Helen, and Kevin, from Church Point and we set off for an afternoon around <a href=\"http:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/experiences\/tour\/12\" target=\"_blank\">Druridge Bay<\/a> and southeast Northumberland.\u00a0 The afternoon had an almost constant aural backdrop of <em><strong>Chiffchaff<\/strong><\/em> song, and <em><strong>Chaffinch, Goldfinch, Robin, Blackbird<\/strong><\/em> and <em><strong>Goldcrest<\/strong><\/em> all added to the springlike feel of the afternoon.\u00a0 <em><strong>Curlew, Redshank<\/strong><\/em> and <em><strong>Oystercatcher<\/strong><\/em> were all probing in gooey mud but with no sign of agitation to suggest that there was an <em><strong>Otter<\/strong><\/em> around.\u00a0 A family of <em><strong>Whooper Swans<\/strong><\/em> were a reminder that winter is only just behind us, while <em><strong>Swallows<\/strong><\/em> and <em><strong>Sand Martins<\/strong><\/em> heralded the move towards the summer.\u00a0 <em><strong>Skylark<\/strong><\/em> and <em><strong>Meadow Pipit<\/strong><\/em> both demonstrated that they&#8217;re more than brown and uninteresting, <em><strong>Marsh Harriers<\/strong><\/em> and <em><strong>Common Buzzards<\/strong><\/em> are likely to remain a feature of our Druridge Bay trips for a few months, a handsome <em><strong>Roebuck<\/strong><\/em> ran across the fields and vanished behind a hedge and the assembled <em><strong>wildfowl<\/strong><\/em> had got their eye on something in the reeds&#8230;<em><strong>Goldeneye, Tufted Duck, Mallard, Little Grebe, Great Crested Grebe, Canada Goose<\/strong><\/em> and <em><strong>Greylag Goose<\/strong><\/em> were all fixated on one small area of a reedbed.\u00a0 Alert, nervous and barely breaking their gaze they&#8217;d obviously spotted something.\u00a0 What though?\u00a0 Whatever it was remained hidden from our sight, although it held the attention of the birds for a long time.\u00a0 The reedbed was probably a much better option than braving the keen northerly breeze!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The best thing about wildife, and at the same time occasionally the most frustrating thing, is that you can&#8217;t ever predict exactly what it&#8217;s going to do&#8230; I collected Jeff and Helen, and Kevin, from Church Point and we set off for an afternoon around Druridge Bay and southeast Northumberland.\u00a0 The afternoon had an almost [&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],"tags":[133,560,102,268,148,172,135,103,488,757,360,171,397,207,837,210,358,116,66,218,191,217,130],"class_list":["post-3277","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-druridge","category-otter","tag-blackbird","tag-canada-goose","tag-chaffinch","tag-chiffchaff","tag-common-buzzard","tag-curlew","tag-goldcrest","tag-goldfinch","tag-great-crested-grebe","tag-greyalg-goose","tag-little-grebe","tag-mallard","tag-marsh-harrier","tag-meadow-pipit","tag-otter","tag-oystercatcher","tag-redshank","tag-robin","tag-roe-deer","tag-sand-martin","tag-skylark","tag-swallow","tag-whooper-swan"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3277","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=3277"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3277\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3279,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3277\/revisions\/3279"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3277"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3277"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3277"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}