{"id":3825,"date":"2017-06-09T13:50:26","date_gmt":"2017-06-09T12:50:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/?p=3825"},"modified":"2017-06-09T13:50:26","modified_gmt":"2017-06-09T12:50:26","slug":"the-golden-hour-bespoke-coastal-birdwatching-070617","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/northumberland\/druridge\/the-golden-hour-bespoke-coastal-birdwatching-070617","title":{"rendered":"The golden hour; Bespoke coastal birdwatching 07\/06\/17"},"content":{"rendered":"

I collected Nicky and Mick from Newbiggin and we set off for an afternoon and evening exploring Druridge Bay<\/a> and south east Northumberland.\u00a0 The weather was somewhat nicer than it had been 24h earlier, in fact postively summery although with a fairly stiff breeze.\u00a0 Sometimes I could write a blog post by skipping to the last hour or so of the trip and, after a challenging afternoon including a good look at Black-headed, Herring<\/strong><\/em> and Lesser Black-backed Gulls<\/strong><\/em>, Whitehroats<\/strong><\/em> song-flighting from bramble scrub and a couple of woodland walks with Jays<\/strong><\/em> playing hide and seek with us, Treecreepers<\/strong><\/em> creeping up the trunks of trees, Robins<\/strong><\/em> and Wrens<\/strong><\/em> singing from deep cover and Fulmars gliding on stiff wings along the clifftops that’s where we find ourselves…<\/p>\n

Against a stiff northwesterly the Barn Owl<\/strong><\/em> was struggling; already\u00a0bearing the heavy burden of a plump vole<\/strong><\/em> it was flying northeasterly and sideways to make progress to the north, forced out over the sea before battling it’s way back onshore and dropping from the remarkable height it had chosen to fly at as Great Crested Grebes<\/strong><\/em> radiated elegance on the choppy water in front of us and a Starling<\/strong><\/em> murmuration numbered a couple of hundred birds.\u00a0 As the light levels dropped to absolutely sublime it was time for more owls<\/strong><\/em> to put in an appearance;\u00a0 first another Barn Owl<\/strong><\/em>, then another, another and incredibly our fifth of the evening, with three of them in one binocular view \ud83d\ude42\u00a0 With an aural backdrop of Mallard, Gadwall, Wigeon, Curlew<\/strong><\/em> and Lapwing<\/strong><\/em>, and the air filled with Swifts<\/strong><\/em> the scene was set for another owl<\/strong><\/em>, this time a Long-eared<\/strong><\/em> hunting through the dunes, it’s dark plumage providing a stark contrast to the pale ghostly Barn Owls<\/strong><\/em>.\u00a0 There was another surprise waiting for us too as Nicky asked “what are those birds along there?”.\u00a0 I turned and looked through my binoculars and the impression was raptor-like, combined with a hint of thin, long-tailed Woodpigeon<\/strong><\/em>…a closer look therough our ‘scope, and there were two Cuckoos<\/strong><\/em>!\u00a0 The final hour is often the highlight of a day watching wildlife, but this hour was just shoveling the quality in \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I collected Nicky and Mick from Newbiggin and we set off for an afternoon and evening exploring Druridge Bay and south east Northumberland.\u00a0 The weather was somewhat nicer than it had been 24h earlier, in fact postively summery although with a fairly stiff breeze.\u00a0 Sometimes I could write a blog post by skipping to the […]<\/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":[97,271,381,593,264,122,488,499,174,161],"class_list":["post-3825","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-druridge","tag-barn-owl","tag-black-headed-gull","tag-common-cuckoo","tag-common-whitethroat","tag-cuckoo","tag-fulmar","tag-great-crested-grebe","tag-lesser-black-backed-gull","tag-long-eared-owl","tag-starling"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3825","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=3825"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3825\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3829,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3825\/revisions\/3829"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3825"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3825"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3825"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}