{"id":3667,"date":"2016-10-27T11:07:54","date_gmt":"2016-10-27T10:07:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/?p=3667"},"modified":"2016-10-27T11:07:54","modified_gmt":"2016-10-27T10:07:54","slug":"the-enchantment-of-dusk-bespoke-otter-safari-261016","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/northumberland\/druridge\/the-enchantment-of-dusk-bespoke-otter-safari-261016","title":{"rendered":"The enchantment of dusk; Bespoke Otter Safari 26\/10\/16"},"content":{"rendered":"

Whatever the time of year, that final hour or so before it’s too dark to see any wildlife is invariably the best bit of the day…<\/p>\n

I collected Gerry and Tracey from The Swan<\/a> and we headed towards the coast for a day in search of Otters<\/strong><\/em>.\u00a0 Goldcrests, Long-tailed Tits<\/strong><\/em> and Robins<\/strong><\/em> provided noise and movement in the bushes, Teal, Mallard, Tufted Duck, Common Scoter, Wigeon, Gadwall<\/strong><\/em> and Little Grebe<\/strong><\/em> were dabbling and\/or diving, Cormorant, Goosander<\/strong><\/em> and Red-breasted Merganser<\/strong><\/em> all emanated an air of sleek menace, Grey Heron<\/strong><\/em> and Little Egret<\/strong><\/em> stalked patiently along the edges of shallow pools where Black-tailed Godwits<\/strong><\/em> radiated elegance, Curlew<\/strong><\/em> probed for worms in grassy fields, Eider<\/strong><\/em> were just beyond the gently rolling surf as low sunlight illuminated the dunes to structures of extraordinary beauty and Carrion Crows<\/strong><\/em> harried a Common Buzzard<\/strong><\/em> as it flapped lazily over the coastal fields.<\/p>\n

As the sun dipped towards the horizon, ducks<\/strong><\/em> and geese<\/strong><\/em> were silhouetted against a stunning orange reflection and an all-out assault on the senses began to build.\u00a0 First Starlings<\/strong><\/em>, just a few hundred intially, building to a murmuration of several thousand as wave after wave of birds arrived – some to join the swirling amorphous dark cloud overhead, others heading straight in to the reeds as they’d arrived too late to join the party.\u00a0 Water Rails<\/strong><\/em> screeched, squealed and chattered from the reeds nearby and Pink-footed Geese<\/strong><\/em> began arriving as Roe Deer<\/strong><\/em> grazed in the open as the cover of falling light levels provided them with a cloak of safety.\u00a0 A few dozen geese<\/strong><\/em>, noisily yapping as they adjusted their approach to be into the headwind ready for landing, became a few hundred, then a thousand or so, and eventually around 5000 with skeins arriving from south and north east.\u00a0 In front of us, the combination of sunset and dark cloud had left one sublime strip of orange light when Gerry said “what’s that just there?”.\u00a0 Sleek, sinuous and menacing, the Otter<\/strong><\/em> swam across the strip of light and out of sight from us, although the geese and ducks spent a good 5 minutes staring in the direction it had departed \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n

As the clouds overhead cleared the darkening sky revealed some of it’s gems; first Arcturus<\/strong><\/em>, then the Summer Triangle<\/strong><\/em> (Deneb, Vega<\/strong><\/em> and Altair<\/strong><\/em>) and Mars<\/strong><\/em> before the familiar asterism of The Plough<\/strong><\/em> and, appropriately as it was accompanied by the remarkable calls of Whooper Swans, Cygnus.\u00a0 <\/strong><\/em>A great end to a fantastic day, searching for wildlife and discussing otters, squirrels<\/strong><\/em>, Pine Martens<\/strong><\/em>, rewilding and post-industrial landscapes with lovely clients \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Whatever the time of year, that final hour or so before it’s too dark to see any wildlife is invariably the best bit of the day… I collected Gerry and Tracey from The Swan and we headed towards the coast for a day in search of Otters.\u00a0 Goldcrests, Long-tailed Tits and Robins provided noise and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,141,139],"tags":[813,242,272,148,67,673,135,378,283,243,360,121,792,837,129,188,116,66,161,811,182,800,237],"class_list":["post-3667","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-druridge","category-northumberland-coast","category-southeast-northumberland","tag-altair","tag-black-tailed-godwit","tag-carrion-crow","tag-common-buzzard","tag-common-scoter","tag-cygnus","tag-goldcrest","tag-goosander","tag-grey-heron","tag-little-egret","tag-little-grebe","tag-long-tailed-tit","tag-mars","tag-otter","tag-pink-footed-goose","tag-red-breasted-merganser","tag-robin","tag-roe-deer","tag-starling","tag-summer-triangle","tag-tufted-duck","tag-vega","tag-water-rail"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3667","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=3667"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3667\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3669,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3667\/revisions\/3669"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3667"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3667"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3667"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}