{"id":3380,"date":"2016-07-05T11:31:04","date_gmt":"2016-07-05T10:31:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/?p=3380"},"modified":"2016-07-05T11:31:04","modified_gmt":"2016-07-05T10:31:04","slug":"storm-watching-newts-north-sea-pelagic-010716","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/northumberland\/north-sea\/storm-watching-newts-north-sea-pelagic-010716","title":{"rendered":"Storm watching; NEWT&#8217;s North Sea Pelagic 01\/07\/16"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Friday was our second <a href=\"http:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/welcome\/tour\/3\" target=\"_blank\">North Sea pelagic trip<\/a> for 2016 and as we sailed from Royal Quays the sky looked a bit dark away to the north&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>By the time we were off Whitley Bay we were under blue skies and sunshine while away to the west of us Northumberland was being battered by storms of hail and rain.\u00a0 Suddenly the wind picked up and the sea became a mass of foaming white horses and the first drops of rain hit the boat.\u00a0 With the wind whistling around the boat we soon picked up an entourage of <em><strong>Herring<\/strong><\/em> and <em><strong>Lesser Black-backed Gulls<\/strong><\/em>.\u00a0 <em><strong>Gulls<\/strong><\/em> may not be everyone&#8217;s cup of tea, but against a dark grey sky there&#8217;s no denying they&#8217;re quite impressive birds.\u00a0 Just a few metres above the deck they seemed to be sheltering in the lee of the wheelhouse as we headed into the wind.\u00a0 <em><strong>Gannets<\/strong><\/em> flew by and a flock of <em><strong>Common Scoter<\/strong><\/em>, looking to be just perfectly placed in the dark weather conditions, overtook us and headed north.\u00a0 <em><strong>Fulmars<\/strong><\/em> flew effortlessly just a few centimetres above the waves while <em><strong>Puffin<\/strong><\/em> and <em><strong>Guillemot<\/strong><\/em> made flight look like a much more laboured undertaking and away to the east a double rainbow had formed.\u00a0 As conditions settled back down we found a small group of <em><strong>Gannets<\/strong><\/em> diving into the water and it was time to head back to port.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Friday was our second North Sea pelagic trip for 2016 and as we sailed from Royal Quays the sky looked a bit dark away to the north&#8230; By the time we were off Whitley Bay we were under blue skies and sunshine while away to the west of us Northumberland was being battered by storms [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[105],"tags":[67,122,185,186,143,301,499,225],"class_list":["post-3380","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-north-sea","tag-common-scoter","tag-fulmar","tag-gannet","tag-guillemot","tag-herring-gull","tag-kittiwake","tag-lesser-black-backed-gull","tag-puffin"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3380","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=3380"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3380\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3382,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3380\/revisions\/3382"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3380"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3380"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3380"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}