{"id":3582,"date":"2016-08-26T08:00:17","date_gmt":"2016-08-26T07:00:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/?p=3582"},"modified":"2016-08-26T08:00:17","modified_gmt":"2016-08-26T07:00:17","slug":"avoiding-the-crowds-lindisfarne-mini-safari-230816","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/northumberland\/lindisfarne\/avoiding-the-crowds-lindisfarne-mini-safari-230816","title":{"rendered":"Avoiding the crowds; Lindisfarne mini-Safari 23\/08\/16"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Northumberland is a sparsely populated county where it&#8217;s relatively easy to get away from it all and enjoy watching wildlife without the hustle and bustle of large numbers of other people&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>I met up with Lynsey, Francis, Gregory and Thea in the main car park on <a href=\"http:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/experiences\/tour\/16\" target=\"_blank\">Holy Island<\/a> ahead of an afternoon mini-Safari around the island.\u00a0 The car park was busy, really busy, and there were lots of people walking to and from the village and the castle.\u00a0 There&#8217;s so much more to Holy Island than that though, and we set off along the Straight Lonnen and away from the crowds \ud83d\ude42\u00a0 <em><strong>Gannets<\/strong><\/em> were passing by offshore, <em><strong>Oystercatchers<\/strong><\/em> were roosting just above the tide line and <em><strong>Grey Herons<\/strong><\/em> were stalking through rockpools as <em><strong>Goosander<\/strong><\/em> swam rapidly past them with their heads submerged in a search for fish.\u00a0 <em><strong>Little Grebe, Moorhen, Coot, Mute Swan<\/strong><\/em> and <em><strong>Mallard<\/strong><\/em> were on The Lough and <em><strong>Curlew<\/strong><\/em> flew overhead.\u00a0 <em><strong>Viper&#8217;s Bugloss<\/strong><\/em> and <em><strong>Grass of Parnassus<\/strong><\/em> were still in flower as the sharp eyesight of Thea and Gregory brought <em><strong>hoverflies, bees, moths<\/strong><\/em> and <em><strong>Meadow Brown, Painted Lady<\/strong><\/em> and <em><strong>Small Tortoiseshell<\/strong><\/em> flicked back and forth across the path in front of us.\u00a0 <em><strong>Meadow Pipits<\/strong><\/em> appeared out of the grass and vanished almost as quickly and a <em><strong>Pheasant<\/strong><\/em> broke into a trot ahead of us.\u00a0 As the rising tide began to flood over Fenham Flats, the eerie moans of <em><strong>Grey Seals<\/strong><\/em> carried on the breeze and a dense swirling cloud of distant waders soon resolved into the familiar shape, and sound, of <em><strong>Golden Plover<\/strong><\/em>.\u00a0 As we returned to the car park, there were only half a dozen cars still there and the island was incredibly quiet as the rising tide had brought the usual mass departure \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Northumberland is a sparsely populated county where it&#8217;s relatively easy to get away from it all and enjoy watching wildlife without the hustle and bustle of large numbers of other people&#8230; I met up with Lynsey, Francis, Gregory and Thea in the main car park on Holy Island ahead of an afternoon mini-Safari around the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[119,10,141],"tags":[270,172,185,175,378,806,283,835,360,171,339,207,198,178,210,804,504,464,585],"class_list":["post-3582","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-holy-island","category-lindisfarne","category-northumberland-coast","tag-coot","tag-curlew","tag-gannet","tag-golden-plover","tag-goosander","tag-grass-of-parnassus","tag-grey-heron","tag-grey-seal","tag-little-grebe","tag-mallard","tag-meadow-brown","tag-meadow-pipit","tag-moorhen","tag-mute-swan","tag-oystercatcher","tag-painted-lady","tag-pheasant","tag-small-tortoiseshell","tag-vipers-bugloss"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3582","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=3582"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3582\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3584,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3582\/revisions\/3584"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3582"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3582"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3582"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}