{"id":3651,"date":"2016-10-11T09:38:18","date_gmt":"2016-10-11T08:38:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/?p=3651"},"modified":"2016-10-11T09:38:18","modified_gmt":"2016-10-11T08:38:18","slug":"iridescence-in-the-gloom-otter-mini-safari-091016","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/northumberland\/druridge\/iridescence-in-the-gloom-otter-mini-safari-091016","title":{"rendered":"Iridescence in the gloom; Otter mini-Safari 09\/10\/16"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Sunday&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/tour\/1\" target=\"_blank\">Otter mini-Safari<\/a> started at Church Point with an intense rainbow visible away to the east, and variable weather conditions depending on which direction we looked&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>I collected Gemma and Jay, then Arthur and Gill and we headed up into <a href=\"http:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/experiences\/tour\/12\" target=\"_blank\">Druridge Bay<\/a> to start our search.\u00a0 <em><strong>Pink-footed Geese,<\/strong><\/em> one of the great harbingers of the coming winter, were grazing in roadside fields, <em><strong>Tufted Duck, Mallard, Coot, Moorhen, Teal, Gadwall, Cormorant, Little Grebe<\/strong><\/em> and <em><strong>Great Crested Grebe<\/strong><\/em> were all looking just too relaxed, <em><strong>Starlings<\/strong><\/em> were starting to assemble ready for the evening&#8217;s murmuration and <em><strong>Greylag<\/strong><\/em> and <em><strong>Canada Geese<\/strong><\/em> filled the air with a cacophony that most would find it hard to describe as pleasant \ud83d\ude42\u00a0 <em><strong>Grey Herons<\/strong><\/em> and <em><strong>Little Egrets<\/strong><\/em> stalked along the water&#8217;s edge at dusk as skeins of <em><strong>geese<\/strong><\/em> flew to roost, <em><strong>Mallard<\/strong><\/em> and <em><strong>Teal<\/strong><\/em> scattered nervously from one heavily shaded area close to the bankside but the cause of their distress remained unseen and, in the gloom of fading light, a flash of iridescent blue as a <em><strong>Kingfisher<\/strong><\/em> flew by and perched on a rock just upstream from us before plunging into the water and returning to its perch with a small fish.\u00a0 That was repeated with the bird using a range of rocks, twigs and branches as a perch before it vanished into a bush as two <em><strong>Grey Herons<\/strong><\/em> engaged in a noisy dispute and disturbed it&#8217;s hunting.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Sunday&#8217;s Otter mini-Safari started at Church Point with an intense rainbow visible away to the east, and variable weather conditions depending on which direction we looked&#8230; I collected Gemma and Jay, then Arthur and Gill and we headed up into Druridge Bay to start our search.\u00a0 Pink-footed Geese, one of the great harbingers of 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":[9],"tags":[560,170,488,283,190,120,243,360,171,129,161,169,182],"class_list":["post-3651","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-druridge","tag-canada-goose","tag-gadwall","tag-great-crested-grebe","tag-grey-heron","tag-greylag-goose","tag-kingfisher","tag-little-egret","tag-little-grebe","tag-mallard","tag-pink-footed-goose","tag-starling","tag-teal","tag-tufted-duck"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3651","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=3651"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3651\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3653,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3651\/revisions\/3653"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3651"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3651"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3651"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}