{"id":4035,"date":"2017-08-25T17:18:22","date_gmt":"2017-08-25T16:18:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/?p=4035"},"modified":"2017-08-25T17:18:22","modified_gmt":"2017-08-25T16:18:22","slug":"halcyon-days-druridge-bay-mini-safari-250817","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/northumberland\/druridge\/halcyon-days-druridge-bay-mini-safari-250817","title":{"rendered":"Halcyon days; Druridge Bay mini-Safari 25\/08\/17"},"content":{"rendered":"

This morning saw me working at the opposite end of the day to usual, and I arrived to collect James, Wendy, Megan and Saffy (an adorable Whippet) from Church Point at 09:00, ahead of a morning around Druridge Bay and Southeast Northumberland<\/a>…<\/p>\n

Sand Martins<\/strong><\/em> and Swallows<\/strong><\/em> were feeding low over the water, a Grey Heron<\/strong><\/em> stood motionless as 7 Little Egrets<\/strong><\/em> engaged in the favourite heron<\/strong><\/em> pastime of wasting energy chasing each other from feeding spots, Mute Swans<\/strong><\/em> fed serenely and Little Grebes<\/strong><\/em> were diving constantly in search of small fish before being disturbed by one of the egrets.\u00a0 Flocks of Tufted Duck, Mallard<\/strong><\/em> and Teal<\/strong><\/em> are building and the one remaining Great Crested Grebe<\/strong><\/em> chick that we see regularly is now almost the same size as it’s parents.\u00a0 Canada<\/strong><\/em> and Greylag Geese<\/strong><\/em> are in noisy flocks that will be bolstered when more Greylags<\/strong><\/em>, and Pink-footed Geese<\/strong><\/em> arrive for the winter and a small Starling<\/strong><\/em> murmuration swirled in front of us before executing a rapid descent.\u00a0 Black-tailed Godwits, Ringed Plover, Redshank<\/strong><\/em> and Common Snipe<\/strong><\/em> represented the waders but a real highlight of the morning was two species that I don’t think I’ve ever seen in one ‘scope view.\u00a0 Cormorants<\/strong><\/em> were feeding, often just dipping their heads under the water and catching what looked like snails, and as I scanned the area where the water had just swirled, just to be sure it was a Cormorant<\/strong><\/em>, I spotted a Kingfisher<\/strong><\/em>.\u00a0 I set the ‘scope up so that everyone could have a closer view of the ‘halcyon bird’, and Wendy looked through the ‘scope and described another bird that was in the reeds just behind the Kingfisher<\/strong><\/em>…and there was a Water Rail<\/strong><\/em> \ud83d\ude42\u00a0 That odd-looking secretive denizen of the reeds stayed in view just long enough for everyone to see before it vanished back into the impenetrable density of the reedbed.<\/p>\n

I could get used to earlier starts for our Druridge Bay trips \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This morning saw me working at the opposite end of the day to usual, and I arrived to collect James, Wendy, Megan and Saffy (an adorable Whippet) from Church Point at 09:00, ahead of a morning around Druridge Bay and Southeast Northumberland… Sand Martins and Swallows were feeding low over the water, a Grey Heron […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,139],"tags":[242,560,556,373,372,488,283,190,120,243,360,171,224,218,161,217,169,182,237],"class_list":["post-4035","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-druridge","category-southeast-northumberland","tag-black-tailed-godwit","tag-canada-goose","tag-common-redshank","tag-common-snipe","tag-cormorant","tag-great-crested-grebe","tag-grey-heron","tag-greylag-goose","tag-kingfisher","tag-little-egret","tag-little-grebe","tag-mallard","tag-ringed-plover","tag-sand-martin","tag-starling","tag-swallow","tag-teal","tag-tufted-duck","tag-water-rail"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4035","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=4035"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4035\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4037,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4035\/revisions\/4037"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4035"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4035"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4035"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}