{"id":3913,"date":"2017-07-13T10:03:54","date_gmt":"2017-07-13T09:03:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/?p=3913"},"modified":"2017-07-13T10:03:54","modified_gmt":"2017-07-13T09:03:54","slug":"localised-weather-systems-cheviot-valleys-group-birdwatching-110717","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/northumberland\/cheviot-valleys\/localised-weather-systems-cheviot-valleys-group-birdwatching-110717","title":{"rendered":"Localised weather systems; Cheviot Valleys group birdwatching 11\/07\/17"},"content":{"rendered":"

Watching the weather forecast on the breakfast news, I was confident that any rain we encountered on our day in the Cheviot Valleys<\/a> would be quickly passing showers…<\/p>\n

As I collected Mike and the other 12 members of his group from Belford there was a steady drizzle, and I was questioning the forecast already \ud83d\ude09 Heading into the hills we were soon watching Pheasant, Red-legged Partridge<\/strong><\/em> and a Brown Hare<\/strong><\/em> that loped across the road in front of us before heading up a rough track and out of sight.\u00a0 The air was damp and warm; perfect conditions for midges and the Sand Martins, House Martins<\/strong><\/em> and Swallows<\/strong><\/em> that were busy hoovering them up.\u00a0 Lesser Redpoll<\/strong><\/em> were trilling overhead, the high-pitched calls of Siskin<\/strong><\/em> pierced the damp air and a female Red Grouse<\/strong><\/em> was leading her chicks through the heather as we headed along the path to higher ground.\u00a0 You should be careful what you wish for, and I’d just mentioned that a slightly stiffer breeze would suppress the degree of annoyance that the midges tend to bring, when the breeze did start to pick up a bit.\u00a0 Eventually the stiff easterly was driving rain into the valley and the forecast was looking like a wild guess at what the weather was actually going to do.\u00a0 I suggested that we retreat to the lower reaches of the valley and see what the weather was like down there.\u00a0 It was better, much better in fact and our second walk of the day, following a lunch stop that was accompanied by a very obliging Yellowhammer<\/strong><\/em>, brought Common Buzzard, Common Sandpiper, Grey Wagtail<\/strong><\/em>, Curlew<\/strong><\/em>, a family of Whinchat<\/strong><\/em> and, after a lot of effort, the two target species for the afternoon – Dipper<\/strong><\/em> and Ring Ouzel<\/strong><\/em> – as a young Roe Deer<\/strong><\/em> watched us from the other side of the valley.\u00a0 Just a few miles back along the road on our return journey to Belford the roads were dry, bone dry and it seemed that we’d been enjoying a remarkable bit of micro-climate \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Watching the weather forecast on the breakfast news, I was confident that any rain we encountered on our day in the Cheviot Valleys would be quickly passing showers… As I collected Mike and the other 12 members of his group from Belford there was a steady drizzle, and I was questioning the forecast already \ud83d\ude09 […]<\/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":[57,148,214,172,257,256,232,134,140,207,504,208,759,263,66,218,89,217,126],"class_list":["post-3913","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cheviot-valleys","tag-brown-hare","tag-common-buzzard","tag-common-sandpiper","tag-curlew","tag-dipper","tag-grey-wagtail","tag-house-martin","tag-lesser-redpoll","tag-linnet","tag-meadow-pipit","tag-pheasant","tag-red-grouse","tag-red-legged-partridge","tag-ring-ouzel","tag-roe-deer","tag-sand-martin","tag-siskin","tag-swallow","tag-yellowhammer"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3913","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=3913"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3913\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3915,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3913\/revisions\/3915"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3913"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3913"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3913"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}