{"id":3761,"date":"2017-04-17T19:33:49","date_gmt":"2017-04-17T18:33:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/?p=3761"},"modified":"2017-04-17T19:33:49","modified_gmt":"2017-04-17T18:33:49","slug":"april-showers-otter-safari-160417","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/northumberland\/druridge\/april-showers-otter-safari-160417","title":{"rendered":"April showers; Otter Safari 16\/04\/17"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Yesterday&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/tour\/1\" target=\"_blank\">Otter Safari<\/a> had an interesting weather forecast; damp during the afternoon, but forecast to be completely clear by 7pm.\u00a0 Soon after I collected Rachel, Andrew, Gemma and Dave from Church Point, the first part of the forecast was borne out by reality, as we spent the first couple of hours in persistent rain&#8230;<\/p>\n<p><em><strong>Common Redshank, Curlew<\/strong><\/em> and <em><strong>Oystercatcher<\/strong><\/em> were all calling noisily and alarming, but the only thing we could see that was causing them any distress was themselves.\u00a0 Despite the rain, the warm conditions had triggered a substantial hatch of insects and <em><strong>Black-headed Gulls, Sand Martins<\/strong><\/em> and <em><strong>Swallows<\/strong><\/em> were all taking advantage of nature&#8217;s bounty.\u00a0 The clearing weather brought a ten minute spell of nice weather as we had our picnic while watching a <em><strong>Grey Seal<\/strong><\/em> and <em><strong>Common Eiders<\/strong><\/em> in the surf, and <em><strong>Fulmars<\/strong><\/em> soaring on stiff wings along the clifftops.\u00a0 <em><strong>Grey Herons<\/strong><\/em> and <em><strong>Little Egrets<\/strong><\/em> were standing motionless as <em><strong>Lapwings<\/strong><\/em> displayed overhead with their bizarre calls defying belief and a stunning drake <em><strong>Pintail<\/strong><\/em> flew around.<\/p>\n<p>Following Friday&#8217;s unsuccessful Otter Safari we&#8217;d made a few changes to the plan for Sunday and, as the sun set away to the west in what was absolutely not a cloudless sky, <em><strong>Sand Martins<\/strong><\/em> were replaced in the pursuit of flying insects by <em><strong>Noctule<\/strong><\/em> and <em><strong>pipistrelle<\/strong> <strong>bats<\/strong>,<\/em> a <em><strong>Long-eared Owl<\/strong><\/em> hunted along a woodland edge and&#8230;we watched an <em><strong>Otter<\/strong><\/em> hunting in the shadow of a reedbed for nearly 45 minutes \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Yesterday&#8217;s Otter Safari had an interesting weather forecast; damp during the afternoon, but forecast to be completely clear by 7pm.\u00a0 Soon after I collected Rachel, Andrew, Gemma and Dave from Church Point, the first part of the forecast was borne out by reality, as we spent the first couple of hours in persistent rain&#8230; Common [&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":[271,556,172,488,283,243,174,60,210,179,292,218,217],"class_list":["post-3761","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-druridge","tag-black-headed-gull","tag-common-redshank","tag-curlew","tag-great-crested-grebe","tag-grey-heron","tag-little-egret","tag-long-eared-owl","tag-noctule-bat","tag-oystercatcher","tag-pintail","tag-pipistrelle","tag-sand-martin","tag-swallow"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3761","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=3761"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3761\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3765,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3761\/revisions\/3765"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3761"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3761"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3761"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}