{"id":3330,"date":"2016-06-09T10:18:57","date_gmt":"2016-06-09T09:18:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/?p=3330"},"modified":"2016-06-09T10:18:57","modified_gmt":"2016-06-09T09:18:57","slug":"a-ruff-morning-for-a-redshank-druridge-bay-safari-030616","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/northumberland\/druridge\/a-ruff-morning-for-a-redshank-druridge-bay-safari-030616","title":{"rendered":"A Ruff morning for a Redshank; Druridge Bay Safari 03\/06\/16"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>As much as I enjoy searching for, and finding, wildlife with our clients I have to admit to a fascination what wildlife does and how it behaves&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>I collected Stephen and Kate from <a href=\"http:\/\/www.theswanchoppington.co.uk\" target=\"_blank\">The Swan<\/a> for their second day out with NEWT, this time exploring NEWT&#8217;s local patch of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/experiences\/tour\/12\" target=\"_blank\">Druridge Bay<\/a> and southeast Northumberland.<\/p>\n<p>Druridge Bay is a great place throughout the year, there&#8217;s always plenty to see, and Thursday was no exception. <em><strong>Great Crested Grebes<\/strong><\/em>, haughtily elegant, <em><strong>Mallard, Wigeon, Teal, Tufted Duck, Gadwall, Shoveler, Shelduck<\/strong><\/em>, all so different from the duller plumage they&#8217;ll be wearing shortly, dainty <em><strong>Little Gulls<\/strong><\/em> flycatching amnogst flocks of <em><strong>Black-headed Gull<\/strong><\/em> and even a couple of rarities, <em><strong>Great White Egret,<\/strong><\/em> hunched in the rushes near a <em><strong>Grey Heron<\/strong><\/em>, and <em><strong>Bonaparte&#8217;s Gull<\/strong><\/em>, roosting with <em><strong>Black-headed Gulls<\/strong><\/em>, for good measure.<\/p>\n<p>At this time of year one of the highlights is often wading birds on passage.\u00a0 These birds, so cryptically patterned during the winter months, often appear in rather stunning breeding finery at the end of spring passage, and the start of autumn passage.\u00a0 There&#8217;s little quite as remarkable as a male <em><strong>Ruff<\/strong><\/em> dressed in his best dancing clothes.\u00a0 This <a href=\"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/birdwatching\/wildlife-photography-in-focus\" target=\"_blank\">blog post from 2010<\/a> has an example of one \ud83d\ude42\u00a0 Passage birds in the spring have a raging passion burning in their blood, and as <em><strong>Curlew<\/strong><\/em> displayed overhead and <em><strong>Common Snipe<\/strong><\/em> dropped into the rushes we came across one male <em><strong>Ruff<\/strong><\/em> who was giving it his all.\u00a0 Jumping, prancing, strutting, spreading his ruff like an Elizabethan dandy and bowing handsomely and exaggeratedly at the feet of his intended.\u00a0 There was only one flaw in this impressive dance of desire&#8230;the subject of his attention was a <em><strong>Redshank<\/strong><\/em>!\u00a0 It would appear that in the absence of any <em><strong>Reeves<\/strong><\/em> our <em><strong>Ruff<\/strong><\/em> wasn&#8217;t going to hide his light under a bushel.\u00a0 Settling for second best, or blinded by desire, his ardour wasn&#8217;t dimmed by the persistent rejection from the obviously agitated <em><strong>Redshank <\/strong><\/em>\ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n<p>Wildlife does the funniest things&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As much as I enjoy searching for, and finding, wildlife with our clients I have to admit to a fascination what wildlife does and how it behaves&#8230; I collected Stephen and Kate from The Swan for their second day out with NEWT, this time exploring NEWT&#8217;s local patch of Druridge Bay and southeast Northumberland. Druridge [&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],"tags":[271,774,373,172,170,488,772,283,171,358,241,269,169,125,181],"class_list":["post-3330","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-druridge","tag-black-headed-gull","tag-bonapartes-gull","tag-common-snipe","tag-curlew","tag-gadwall","tag-great-crested-grebe","tag-great-white-egret","tag-grey-heron","tag-mallard","tag-redshank","tag-ruff","tag-shoveler","tag-teal","tag-tree-sparrow","tag-wigeon"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3330","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=3330"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3330\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3332,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3330\/revisions\/3332"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3330"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3330"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3330"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}