The unpredictability of the weather in northern England is one of the reasons I love living here.\u00a0 Early August and you just don’t know whether there’ll be clear skies and sunshine, or something akin to the depths of the autumn…<\/p>\n
I arrived at Kingston Park and met up with Chris (for his third trip with NEWT), Diane and Robin and we headed up the A1 to Berwick where we collected Gill (for her second trip with NEWT in a week).\u00a0 Our first destination was the Holy Island causeway, where we found a Common Seal, Little Egret, Dunlin, Redshank, Curlew, Sanderling, Ringed Plover<\/strong><\/em>, a distant dense flock of Golden Plover<\/strong><\/em> and a few Whimbrel<\/strong><\/em> (including one bird that was obligingly standing next to a Curlew<\/strong><\/em>).\u00a0 A sudden increase in wind strength heralded the arrival of the first rain shower of the day, and a noticeable drop in temperature.\u00a0 Thinking that the poor weather was going to move through earlier than forecast I decided to switch around the plan for the rest of the day and we headed down the coast where we watched Sandwich Terns, Gannets<\/strong><\/em> and masses of gulls<\/strong><\/em> feeding as Fulmars<\/strong><\/em> soared past us on stiff wings, effortless in the breeze.\u00a0 Rafts of Eider<\/strong><\/em> were just beyond the breaking surf as a female Goosander<\/strong><\/em> sat preening on the edge of a rockpool and Knot<\/strong><\/em> and Turnstone<\/strong><\/em> rummaged in the seaweed exposed on the falling tide.\u00a0 Back to scanning the mudflats and Grey Plover<\/strong><\/em> joined the days wader list and Grey Seals<\/strong><\/em> called mournfully from exposed sandbanks before we crossed over onto Holy Island with the weather showing signs of improvement.\u00a0 An adult Mediterranean Gull<\/strong><\/em> was an unexpected find in the car park and we set off to walk around the bits of the island that weren’t busy with visitors…<\/p>\n Grey Herons, Little Grebes<\/strong><\/em> and Moorhen<\/strong><\/em> were around the edges of the Lough as a Reed Warbler<\/strong><\/em> delivered it’s rhythmic chuntering song from a hidden perch in the reeds and the rest of our walk produced Stonechat, Meadow Pipit<\/strong><\/em>, a juvenile Kestrel<\/strong><\/em>, Cinnabar moth<\/strong><\/em> caterpillars and, probably the bird of the day, a Short-eared Owl<\/strong><\/em> quartering the dunes and fields with impressively slow deep wingbeats \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The unpredictability of the weather in northern England is one of the reasons I love living here.\u00a0 Early August and you just don’t know whether there’ll be clear skies and sunshine, or something akin to the depths of the autumn… I arrived at Kingston Park and met up with Chris (for his third trip with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[119],"tags":[583,187,172,288,149,122,185,175,378,283,400,835,128,334,675,360,207,193,358,267,224,80,223,456,215,359,231],"class_list":["post-3536","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-holy-island","tag-cinnabar-moth","tag-common-seal","tag-curlew","tag-dunlin","tag-eider","tag-fulmar","tag-gannet","tag-golden-plover","tag-goosander","tag-grey-heron","tag-grey-plover","tag-grey-seal","tag-kestrel","tag-knot","tag-litte-egret","tag-little-grebe","tag-meadow-pipit","tag-mediterranean-gull","tag-redshank","tag-reed-warbler","tag-ringed-plover","tag-sanderling","tag-sandwich-tern","tag-short-eared-owl","tag-stonechat","tag-turnstone","tag-whimbrel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3536","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=3536"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3536\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3538,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3536\/revisions\/3538"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3536"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3536"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3536"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}