{"id":3687,"date":"2017-01-04T17:07:33","date_gmt":"2017-01-04T16:07:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/?p=3687"},"modified":"2017-01-04T17:07:33","modified_gmt":"2017-01-04T16:07:33","slug":"dusk-bespoke-otter-mini-safari-271216","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/northumberland\/druridge\/dusk-bespoke-otter-mini-safari-271216","title":{"rendered":"Dusk; Bespoke Otter mini-Safari 27\/12\/16"},"content":{"rendered":"

Our final trip of the year was a bespoke Otter mini-Safari<\/a> around Druridge Bay and southeast Northumberland for Diane and Yvonne, who had booked following a recommendation from Claire<\/a> \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n

We met up in Newbiggin and set off on our search.\u00a0 Our first site had plenty of birds but no Otters<\/strong><\/em>, so we headed on to the site where I thought it would be good to be at dusk.\u00a0 A Kingfisher provided a splash of iridescent brilliance in the fading light of mid-afternoon and a group of Teal, Goldeneye, Mallard<\/strong><\/em> and Tufted Duck<\/strong><\/em> drifting away from a reedbed caught my attention.\u00a0 Scanning the reed edge with our telescope revealed a dark shape, twisting and turning but mainly hidden from view in the reeds.\u00a0 It soon vanished, but the ducks were still wary, so I continued scanning that area.\u00a0 After 20mins the Otter<\/strong><\/em> finally came out into open water and each time it dropped out of sight we tracked it by the current location of agitated wildfowl<\/strong><\/em> \ud83d\ude42\u00a0 It was clearly making it’s way towards us and, after a few minutes without a sighting, it was suddenly running along the bank right in front of us!\u00a0 It quickly disappeared into another reedbed, triggering the begging calls of it’s cubs, before reappearing in the water with one cub, as two more continued calling, drowning out the calls of Snipe<\/strong><\/em> and Water Rail<\/strong><\/em> \ud83d\ude42\u00a0 As a Starling<\/strong><\/em> murmuration began to develop, the calls of Whooper Swan<\/strong><\/em> and Pink-footed Goose<\/strong><\/em> cut through the gloom as they arrived to roost and eventually it was too dark to see anything out on the water.<\/p>\n

A fantastic end to the year, and a welcome break from mince pies \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Our final trip of the year was a bespoke Otter mini-Safari around Druridge Bay and southeast Northumberland for Diane and Yvonne, who had booked following a recommendation from Claire \ud83d\ude42 We met up in Newbiggin and set off on our search.\u00a0 Our first site had plenty of birds but no Otters, so we headed on […]<\/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],"tags":[168,120,171,837,129,204,161,169,182,237,130],"class_list":["post-3687","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-druridge","category-otter","tag-goldeneye","tag-kingfisher","tag-mallard","tag-otter","tag-pink-footed-goose","tag-snipe","tag-starling","tag-teal","tag-tufted-duck","tag-water-rail","tag-whooper-swan"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3687","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=3687"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3687\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3689,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3687\/revisions\/3689"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3687"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3687"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3687"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}