One of the things I love about leading tours for NEWT is that almost all of our clients enjoy watching all wildlife.\u00a0 No matter what the particular target species is during a tour, there’s always plenty to hold the attention while we search for that target.<\/p>\n
I collected Jo from Church Point for what turned out to be a one-to-one birdwatching and otter safari<\/a> afternoon and evening around Druridge Bay<\/a> and southeast Northumberland (our other participants had cancelled on Tuesday…).\u00a0 As is often the case wildlife watching was steady during the afternoon, with an interesting ID comparison between Black-headed Gull<\/strong><\/em> and Bonaparte’s Gull<\/strong><\/em>, but the evening, and falling light levels, brought the best of the day.\u00a0 A lone Avocet<\/strong><\/em> was voicing it’s displeasure at something – it isn’t always certain what, Avocets<\/strong><\/em> are just generally noisy and feisty – a distant whirring resolved into the drumming of a Common Snipe<\/strong><\/em> almost directly overhead, Curlew<\/strong><\/em> were calling over the marshes as a Brown Hare<\/strong><\/em> loped by and an obliging Barn Owl<\/strong><\/em> quartered grassland in front of us, periodically dropping into the vegetation but reappearing without prey until it was finally driven away by the attention of couple of Carrion Crows<\/strong><\/em>.\u00a0 Small flocks of, mainly juvenile, Starling<\/strong><\/em> began gathering until there were several thousand whirling around us, their wing beats like the arrival of a storm.\u00a0 My attention was on a group of Tufted Ducks<\/strong><\/em> though – alert, looking nervous and constantly lifting their heads to look around the water.\u00a0 I pointed them out to Jo and said I was confident that they’d seen an Otter<\/strong><\/em> close by.\u00a0 20 minutes later and there it was \ud83d\ude42\u00a0 We watched it for an hour before it slipped from view.\u00a0 Then it reappeared and I gave directions “over to the right, next to that Mute Swan<\/strong><\/em>“…just as Jo spotted one away to our left, and a third one in front of us!\u00a0 Three Otters<\/strong><\/em> in an atmospheric cloud-heavy dusk and a second Barn Owl<\/strong><\/em> carrying prey low over the ground made for an exciting end to the day \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" One of the things I love about leading tours for NEWT is that almost all of our clients enjoy watching all wildlife.\u00a0 No matter what the particular target species is during a tour, there’s always plenty to hold the attention while we search for that target. I collected Jo from Church Point for what turned […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,11],"tags":[40,97,774,57,272,373,172,488,283,243,193,837,66,161,359],"class_list":["post-3344","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-druridge","category-farnes","tag-avocet","tag-barn-owl","tag-bonapartes-gull","tag-brown-hare","tag-carrion-crow","tag-common-snipe","tag-curlew","tag-great-crested-grebe","tag-grey-heron","tag-little-egret","tag-mediterranean-gull","tag-otter","tag-roe-deer","tag-starling","tag-turnstone"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3344","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=3344"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3344\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3346,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3344\/revisions\/3346"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3344"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3344"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3344"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}