{"id":3977,"date":"2017-07-19T18:29:43","date_gmt":"2017-07-19T17:29:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/?p=3977"},"modified":"2017-07-19T18:29:43","modified_gmt":"2017-07-19T17:29:43","slug":"owling-otter-safari-170717","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/northumberland\/druridge\/owling-otter-safari-170717","title":{"rendered":"Owling; Otter Safari 17\/07\/17"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I collected Una and then Verna from Church Point and we set off for an afternoon and evening around <a href=\"http:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/experiences\/tour\/12\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Druridge Bay<\/a> and South East Northumberland searching <a href=\"http:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/tour\/1\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">our favourite Otter spots<\/a>&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>The heat of the afternoon was tempered by a gentle breeze as we came across 8 <em><strong>Little Egrets<\/strong><\/em> and a <em><strong>Kingfisher<\/strong><\/em> put in a brief but brilliant appearance with flash of dazzling azure as it landed on a rock in front of us before flying across the river and reappearing a few minutes later.\u00a0 More azure blue flashed towards the extremity of <em><strong>Blue-tailed Damselflies<\/strong><\/em> and a <em><strong>Red Admiral<\/strong><\/em> took a real liking to Verna, flying around for a few seconds before settling on her arm \ud83d\ude42\u00a0 As the evening progressed the light suddenly switched from dazzling and contrasty to sublimely beautiful.\u00a0 A small <em><strong>Starling<\/strong><\/em> murmuration hinted at the spectacle we&#8217;ll be enjoying by the winter, 2 <em><strong>Roe Deer<\/strong><\/em> were in deep vegetation, a <em><strong>Kestrel<\/strong><\/em> was flitting from tree to tree along the roadside ahead of the car and a <em><strong>Barn Owl<\/strong><\/em> flew over the reeds carrying a <em><strong>Short-tailed Field Vole <\/strong><\/em>as <em><strong>Common Swift, Barn Swallow, House Martin<\/strong><\/em> and <em><strong>Sand Martin<\/strong><\/em> plundered the dense clouds of insects rising above the ethereal mist drifting over the water.<\/p>\n<p>As the light faded and we headed back a <em><strong>Brown Hare<\/strong><\/em> loped along the road ahead of us, pausing on the track into a field and I suggested that <em><strong>owls<\/strong><\/em> should be on the target list for the next 10-15 minutes of the drive.\u00a0 Two separate telegraph poles were adorned with <em><strong>Little Owls<\/strong><\/em>, with the tiny predators giving us their very best withering stare, before a third <em><strong>Little Owl<\/strong><\/em> flew alongside the car briefly and a <em><strong>Barn Owl<\/strong><\/em> drifted across the road ahead of us \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I collected Una and then Verna from Church Point and we set off for an afternoon and evening around Druridge Bay and South East Northumberland searching our favourite Otter spots&#8230; The heat of the afternoon was tempered by a gentle breeze as we came across 8 Little Egrets and a Kingfisher put in a brief [&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":[97,451,290,57,763,232,128,120,243,72,564,336,66,218,899,161],"class_list":["post-3977","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-druridge","tag-barn-owl","tag-barn-swallow","tag-blue-tailed-damselfly","tag-brown-hare","tag-common-swift","tag-house-martin","tag-kestrel","tag-kingfisher","tag-little-egret","tag-little-owl","tag-murmuration","tag-red-admiral","tag-roe-deer","tag-sand-martin","tag-short-tailed-field-vole","tag-starling"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3977","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=3977"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3977\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3979,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3977\/revisions\/3979"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3977"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3977"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3977"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}