{"id":4085,"date":"2017-09-13T11:32:02","date_gmt":"2017-09-13T10:32:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/?p=4085"},"modified":"2017-09-13T11:32:02","modified_gmt":"2017-09-13T10:32:02","slug":"birds-birds-birds-druridge-bay-mini-safari-120917","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/northumberland\/druridge\/birds-birds-birds-druridge-bay-mini-safari-120917","title":{"rendered":"Birds, birds, birds; Druridge Bay mini-Safari 12\/09\/17"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I collected Peter and Melanie from Cramlington ahead of a few hours around <a href=\"http:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Druridge Bay<\/a> and apart from a stiff breeze the weather was just about ideal&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Some impressively dense flocks of <em><strong>Swallows<\/strong><\/em> and <em><strong>Sand Martins<\/strong><\/em> were gorging themselves on flying insects, <em><strong>Little Egrets<\/strong><\/em> were stalking through the shallows with the feathers ruffled by the breeze, <em><strong>Goldfinches<\/strong><\/em> were foraging among the dried out heads of knapweed, <em><strong>Black-tailed Godwit, Ruff<\/strong><\/em> and <em><strong>Dunlin<\/strong><\/em> were wading in the shallows and <em><strong>Shoveler, Gadwall, Teal, Wigeon<\/strong><\/em> and <em><strong>Mallard<\/strong><\/em> were all far less impressive than they&#8217;ll be in a few months time with all of the drakes currently in eclipse plumage.\u00a0 <em><strong>Grey Herons<\/strong><\/em> were sitting motionless along the edges of reedbeds and in among clumps of rush, <em><strong>Starlings<\/strong><\/em> and <em><strong>Lapwings<\/strong><\/em> were swirling on the breeze, <em><strong>Cormorants<\/strong><\/em> were submerging repeatedly in search of food, <em><strong>Little<\/strong><\/em> and <em><strong>Great Crested Grebes<\/strong><\/em> were sleeping in the afternoon sunshine and there were a few real quality birds throughout the afternoon. A <em><strong>Black-necked Grebe<\/strong><\/em> led us a merry dance as it made it&#8217;s way quickly across, and most of the time underneath, the water and a <em><strong>Little Owl<\/strong><\/em> was incredibly obliging, first perched on a feed trough, then a stone wall and finally right on the apex of a cottage roof.\u00a0 <em><strong>Marsh Harrier<\/strong><\/em> and a typically zippy <em><strong>Merlin<\/strong><\/em> rounded out the afternoon and we finished before the rain arrived \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I collected Peter and Melanie from Cramlington ahead of a few hours around Druridge Bay and apart from a stiff breeze the weather was just about ideal&#8230; Some impressively dense flocks of Swallows and Sand Martins were gorging themselves on flying insects, Little Egrets were stalking through the shallows with the feathers ruffled by the [&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":[605,242,372,288,170,488,283,243,360,72,171,397,56,241,218,269,161,217,169,181],"class_list":["post-4085","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-druridge","tag-black-necked-grebe","tag-black-tailed-godwit","tag-cormorant","tag-dunlin","tag-gadwall","tag-great-crested-grebe","tag-grey-heron","tag-little-egret","tag-little-grebe","tag-little-owl","tag-mallard","tag-marsh-harrier","tag-merlin","tag-ruff","tag-sand-martin","tag-shoveler","tag-starling","tag-swallow","tag-teal","tag-wigeon"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4085","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=4085"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4085\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4087,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4085\/revisions\/4087"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4085"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4085"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4085"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}