There’s something special about birds with ‘Little’ in their name, unsurprisingly quite little and I can’t think of a single one that isn’t a delight to watch…<\/p>\n
I collected Calvin from Church Point ahead of an afternoon and evening around Druridge Bay<\/a> and southeast Northumberland searching for Otters,<\/strong><\/em> and the first spots of drizzle were in the air on a stiff westerly breeze.\u00a0 We could soon hear the distinctive yapping calls of Pink-footed Geese<\/strong><\/em> high overhead, and there was an almost continuous passage of these winter visitors from the north for around 7 hours no matter where we were on the coast.\u00a0 A party of Whooper Swans<\/strong><\/em> dropped in, bathing and calling before probably continuing south (we came across what looked to be the same birds a few miles further down the coast later in the afternoon) as a juvenile Marsh Harrier<\/strong><\/em> quartered the reedbeds, hanging in the breeze.\u00a0 A very obliging Little Owl<\/strong><\/em> was preening itself on top of a stone wall, Goosanders<\/strong><\/em> sailed menacingly out from bankside vegetation, four Little Grebes<\/strong><\/em> were plundering a shoal of small fish and the passage of geese<\/strong><\/em> continued.\u00a0 A nice wader<\/strong><\/em> roost included Curlew, Lapwing, Redshank, Dunlin<\/strong><\/em> and three really smart looking Little Stints<\/strong><\/em> before another juvenile Marsh Harrier<\/strong><\/em> drifted by, scattering them all and revealing the presence of two Curlew Sandpipers<\/strong><\/em> which quickly vanished away to the north in light drizzle.\u00a0 The most surprising bird of the afternoon was a Green Woodpecker<\/strong><\/em> that flew across the track at Druridge Pools – checking with Ipin<\/a>, it turns out that there are only two previous records for the site!<\/p>\n As dusk approached the forecast drizzle arrived and, as geese<\/strong><\/em> continued to pass high overhead, Grey Herons<\/strong><\/em> and Little Egrets<\/strong><\/em> flew to roost in the gloom.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" There’s something special about birds with ‘Little’ in their name, unsurprisingly quite little and I can’t think of a single one that isn’t a delight to watch… I collected Calvin from Church Point ahead of an afternoon and evening around Druridge Bay and southeast Northumberland searching for Otters, and the first spots of drizzle were […]<\/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":[556,172,557,103,378,209,283,123,243,360,72,386,397,129,130],"class_list":["post-4097","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-druridge","tag-common-redshank","tag-curlew","tag-curlew-sandpiper","tag-goldfinch","tag-goosander","tag-green-woodpecker","tag-grey-heron","tag-lapwing","tag-little-egret","tag-little-grebe","tag-little-owl","tag-little-stint","tag-marsh-harrier","tag-pink-footed-goose","tag-whooper-swan"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4097","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=4097"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4097\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4101,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4097\/revisions\/4101"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4097"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4097"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4097"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}