{"id":3648,"date":"2016-09-15T15:42:04","date_gmt":"2016-09-15T14:42:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/?p=3648"},"modified":"2016-09-15T15:42:04","modified_gmt":"2016-09-15T14:42:04","slug":"panic-otter-safari-140916","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/northumberland\/druridge\/panic-otter-safari-140916","title":{"rendered":"Panic; Otter Safari 14\/09\/16"},"content":{"rendered":"

We always try to provide a weather forecast a day or two before a trip; it helps people to decide what footwear would be appropriate for example.\u00a0 Sunday’s update for everyone booked on yesterday’s Otter Safari<\/a> was ‘Current weather forecast suggests dry and warm with only a very light NE breeze.’\u00a0 By yesterday morning that had changed to ‘…likely to be cooler than anticipated, damp\/misty and windy…’<\/p>\n

I arrived at Church Point to collect Pamela, Conrad and David & Dianne, and we set off for an afternoon and evening searching for Otters<\/strong><\/em> around Druridge Bay<\/a> and southeast Northumberland.\u00a0 A beautiful ghostly pale adult Mediterranean Gull<\/strong><\/em> in the car park provided a nice comparison with the Black-headed Gull<\/strong><\/em> it was sitting next to and in the heavy mist that was about as far as we could see at the start of the tour.\u00a0 Another Mediterranean Gull<\/strong><\/em>, this time a juvenile moulting into 1st-winter plumage provided an even more educational experience.\u00a0 Gulls<\/strong><\/em> may not be everyone’s cup of tea but they’re great for learning all of the basics of moult and aging \ud83d\ude42\u00a0 Cormorant,<\/strong> Little Grebe, Canada<\/strong><\/em> and Greylag Geese, Mute Swan, Gadwall, Mallard, Wigeon, Teal, Tufted Duck, Grey Heron<\/strong><\/em> and Lapwing <\/strong><\/em>were just about everywhere we went,\u00a0 Ruff<\/strong><\/em> demonstrated their obvious sexual dimorphism, Starling <\/strong><\/em>murmurations were developing in the misty gloom of mid-afternoon and Little Egrets <\/strong><\/em>were delicate, luminous, silently stalking along the water’s edge.\u00a0 A juvenile Marsh Harrier<\/strong><\/em> quartered the edges of nearby fields but was subjected to continuous harrassment from corvids and a late brood of quite well-grown Swallows<\/strong><\/em> watched us from their nest. As dusk approached we were overlooking a stretch of water that I had high hopes for.\u00a0 Suddenly, hitherto unseen on the water in the dark shadows of bankside vegetation, Teal<\/strong><\/em> scattered in an almost perfect circle, including some that flew straight into the tree-lined bank and the impenetrable darkness was bisected by the typical line of bright water of the wake of an Otter<\/strong><\/em> \ud83d\ude42\u00a0 In the deep gloom of dusk, and the softening blanket of mist, it was proving difficult to pin down, and not everyone managed to, and the sequential flushing of Grey Heron <\/strong><\/em>along the bank hinted at it’s progress before it eventually surfaced near a group of Mute Swans<\/strong><\/em>, diving in a slightly more obliging location for a minute or so before it disappeared into the darkness.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We always try to provide a weather forecast a day or two before a trip; it helps people to decide what footwear would be appropriate for example.\u00a0 Sunday’s update for everyone booked on yesterday’s Otter Safari was ‘Current weather forecast suggests dry and warm with only a very light NE breeze.’\u00a0 By yesterday morning that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,21,139],"tags":[271,560,372,170,283,190,123,243,360,171,397,193,178,837,241,161,217,169,182,181],"class_list":["post-3648","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-druridge","category-otter","category-southeast-northumberland","tag-black-headed-gull","tag-canada-goose","tag-cormorant","tag-gadwall","tag-grey-heron","tag-greylag-goose","tag-lapwing","tag-little-egret","tag-little-grebe","tag-mallard","tag-marsh-harrier","tag-mediterranean-gull","tag-mute-swan","tag-otter","tag-ruff","tag-starling","tag-swallow","tag-teal","tag-tufted-duck","tag-wigeon"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3648","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=3648"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3648\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4033,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3648\/revisions\/4033"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3648"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3648"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3648"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}