{"id":3592,"date":"2016-08-28T13:37:23","date_gmt":"2016-08-28T12:37:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/?p=3592"},"modified":"2016-08-28T13:37:23","modified_gmt":"2016-08-28T12:37:23","slug":"amphibians-otter-safari-250816","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/northumberland\/druridge\/amphibians-otter-safari-250816","title":{"rendered":"Amphibians; Otter Safari 25\/08\/16"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>All wildlife tends to have it&#8217;s own niche, and those can be temporary&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>I collected Meryl and Kate from The Swan and we headed towards the coast to spend the afternoon and evening searching for Otters around <a href=\"http:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/experiences\/tour\/12\" target=\"_blank\">Druridge Bay<\/a> and south east Northumberland.\u00a0 The weather forecast wasn&#8217;t great but, as <em><strong>Little Egrets, Grey Herons, Cormorants<\/strong><\/em> and <em><strong>Goosanders<\/strong><\/em> helped themselves to small fish, and much larger fish leapt out of the water nearby, it was slightly misty but the forecast rain stayed away.\u00a0 <em><strong>Common Sandpipers<\/strong><\/em> flew low across the water with their odd flicking wingbeats, <em><strong>Curlew, Oystercatcher, Common Redshank, Lapwing, Dunlin<\/strong><\/em> and <em><strong>Ringed Plover<\/strong><\/em> were all either feeding or roosting, <em><strong>House Martin<\/strong><\/em> and <em><strong>Sand Martin<\/strong><\/em> were enjoying a plethora of flying insects in the humid conditions and <em><strong>Goldfinch<\/strong><\/em> and <em><strong>Linnet<\/strong><\/em> flushed from the riverside scrub each time a walker came along the path.\u00a0 Heading towards dusk, although with waves of low cloud passing through almost continually it was difficult to discern a change in light levels, <em><strong>Greylag Geese<\/strong><\/em> came to roost, emerging noisily from the mist, and <em><strong>Starlings<\/strong><\/em> began their murmuration.\u00a0 A quick trip up to Amble allowed the ladies to sample the delights of Amble&#8217;s finest fish and chips before we headed to our final site for the day.<\/p>\n<p><em><strong>Great Crested Grebe<\/strong><\/em> chicks were begging in near darkness, a <em><strong>Great Crested Newt<\/strong><\/em> was a surprising find and, as the rain had finally arrived, <em><strong>Common Toads<\/strong><\/em> and <em><strong>Common Frogs<\/strong><\/em> were everywhere along the footpaths and roads in the damp, drizzly dark.\u00a0 Another one of those transient niches that creates quite a spectacle when conditions are just right \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>All wildlife tends to have it&#8217;s own niche, and those can be temporary&#8230; I collected Meryl and Kate from The Swan and we headed towards the coast to spend the afternoon and evening searching for Otters around Druridge Bay and south east Northumberland.\u00a0 The weather forecast wasn&#8217;t great but, as Little Egrets, Grey Herons, Cormorants [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[319,214,62,372,172,288,103,378,488,808,283,505,232,123,140,243,360,224,218,189,161],"class_list":["post-3592","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-druridge","tag-common-frog","tag-common-sandpiper","tag-common-toad","tag-cormorant","tag-curlew","tag-dunlin","tag-goldfinch","tag-goosander","tag-great-crested-grebe","tag-great-crested-newt","tag-grey-heron","tag-greylag-geese","tag-house-martin","tag-lapwing","tag-linnet","tag-little-egret","tag-little-grebe","tag-ringed-plover","tag-sand-martin","tag-shelduck","tag-starling"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3592","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=3592"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3592\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3594,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3592\/revisions\/3594"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3592"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3592"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3592"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}