Always expect the unexpected is a good philosophy to hold when you’re out and about searching for wildlife…<\/p>\n
I collected Steph from Kingston Park and we headed north for a morning exploring the Cheviot valleys.\u00a0 Along the streams and rivers Grey Wagtail, Pied Wagtail<\/strong><\/em> and Dipper<\/strong><\/em> were all sitting on rocks or flycatching, Willow Warbler<\/strong><\/em> and Chiffchaff<\/strong><\/em> were singing and House Martins<\/strong><\/em> were gathering mud for their nests as Swallows<\/strong><\/em> perched on wires just above our heads and a Rabbit<\/strong><\/em> sat, unconcerned, in the cooling shade of an Oak<\/strong><\/em>. With temperatures pushing into the 20’s it was always going to be a good day for insects; Wall Brown, Speckled Wood<\/strong><\/em> and Red Admiral<\/strong><\/em> butterflies were all very flightly in the warm sunshine, Common Blue<\/strong><\/em> and Blue-tailed Damselflies<\/strong><\/em> added a flash of colour to all of the verges and Green Tiger Beetles<\/strong><\/em> were basking on small rocks.\u00a0 A yaffling Green Woodpecker<\/strong><\/em> seemed to be mocking us from it’s hidden position before it flew from cover and Steph finally caught up with her bogey bird \ud83d\ude42\u00a0 A Cuckoo<\/strong><\/em> was calling fom the canopy as a Great Spotted Woodpecker<\/strong><\/em> made it’s way from fence post to fallen tree to fence post to tree trunk before finally vanishing deep into the trees and a Spotted Flycatcher<\/strong><\/em> was sallying from a high exposed branch.\u00a0 Oystercatchers<\/strong><\/em> called noisily, the eerie cries of Curlew<\/strong><\/em> drifted across the fells and Red-legged Partridge<\/strong><\/em> and Pheasant<\/strong><\/em> wandered across the roads everywhere we went.<\/p>\n Driving down a single track road we came around a bend and Steph spotted a bird in the road ahead of us.\u00a0 Hunched over, and picking at a carcass, my first thought was Common Buzzard<\/strong><\/em>…and then it sat upright before taking off, attempting to carry the dead Rabbit<\/strong><\/em> it had been picking at.\u00a0 Incredibly numerous in some areas, but still very very scarce in Northumberland; we’ve seen Red Kites<\/strong><\/em> on NEWT safaris before, but this was the first one we’ve found on a trip within our home county \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Always expect the unexpected is a good philosophy to hold when you’re out and about searching for wildlife… I collected Steph from Kingston Park and we headed north for a morning exploring the Cheviot valleys.\u00a0 Along the streams and rivers Grey Wagtail, Pied Wagtail and Dipper were all sitting on rocks or flycatching, Willow Warbler […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[290,268,289,264,172,257,209,256,232,210,504,536,284,336,37,759,402,285,217,895,213],"class_list":["post-3817","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cheviot-valleys","tag-blue-tailed-damselfly","tag-chiffchaff","tag-common-blue-damselfly","tag-cuckoo","tag-curlew","tag-dipper","tag-green-woodpecker","tag-grey-wagtail","tag-house-martin","tag-oystercatcher","tag-pheasant","tag-pied-wagtail","tag-rabbit","tag-red-admiral","tag-red-kite","tag-red-legged-partridge","tag-speckled-wood","tag-spotted-flycatcher","tag-swallow","tag-wall-brown","tag-willow-warbler"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3817","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=3817"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3817\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3819,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3817\/revisions\/3819"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3817"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3817"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3817"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}