{"id":353,"date":"2009-12-30T19:18:17","date_gmt":"2009-12-30T19:18:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/?p=353"},"modified":"2009-12-30T19:18:17","modified_gmt":"2009-12-30T19:18:17","slug":"along-the-valley","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/birdwatching\/along-the-valley","title":{"rendered":"Along the valley"},"content":{"rendered":"

I must have driven the A69 between Throckley and Haydon Bridge over 1000 times.\u00a0 Working at that corner of the county for three years meant that I had the return journey at all times of year and in all weather conditions.\u00a0 It also meant that I could check out birdwatching sites along the route (at least whenever I set off early enough in a morning…or extended the journey home).<\/p>\n

Today we drove that familiar route, traversing the county from east to west, with the snow-covered North Pennine hills away to the south, past Little Owl sites near Ponteland, a couple of fields with Roe Deer (where I first saw them in 2001), several Common Buzzard territories and a Peregrine territory, where there were two birds today – scattering Jackdaws and Lapwings as they went.\u00a0 Astonishing sight of the day was a Fulmar making it’s way E along the valley!\u00a0 I’ve seen them inland before (even our garden has 2 records – and a Fulmar shearing along\u00a0the allotments is a pretty bizarre sight) but this was almost as far from the sea as you can get in the Northeast.\u00a0 Lapwings were dotted around the snow-covered fields, Fieldfares and Redwings were in the roadside hedges and Kestrels were hovering intently over the verge.<\/p>\n

Eventually we arrived at our destination, Poltross Wild Bird Foods<\/a>, where we caught up with Martin and Jose and had a chat about the ongoing battle to save the Red Squirrel.\u00a0 With a car boot filled with bird and squirrel food we drove back east and set about replenishing all of the feeders.\u00a0 Almost immediately\u00a0the garden filled with birds, including 8 Long-tailed Tits and a dozen Chaffinches.\u00a0 The predicted return of bitterly cold weather is likely to lead to a daily re-filling of the feeders.\u00a0 Maybe we’ll even resurrect the Choppington Woods feeding station, although I think ourselves and all of our neighbours are providing an adequate supply…and the feeders\u00a0are safer\u00a0when they’re in our gardens \ud83d\ude09<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I must have driven the A69 between Throckley and Haydon Bridge over 1000 times.\u00a0 Working at that corner of the county for three years meant that I had the return journey at all times of year and in all weather conditions.\u00a0 It also meant that I could check out birdwatching sites along the route (at […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,12,5],"tags":[823,53,102,23,122,123,72,825,55,833,22,66],"class_list":["post-353","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-birdwatching","category-pennines","category-northumberland","tag-birdwatching","tag-buzzard","tag-chaffinch","tag-fieldfare","tag-fulmar","tag-lapwing","tag-little-owl","tag-northumberland","tag-peregrine","tag-red-squirrel","tag-redwing","tag-roe-deer"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/353","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=353"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/353\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":354,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/353\/revisions\/354"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=353"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=353"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=353"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}