{"id":4241,"date":"2018-02-14T11:23:10","date_gmt":"2018-02-14T10:23:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/?p=4241"},"modified":"2018-02-14T11:23:10","modified_gmt":"2018-02-14T10:23:10","slug":"ravenous-otter-mini-safari-13-02-18","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/northumberland\/druridge\/ravenous-otter-mini-safari-13-02-18","title":{"rendered":"Ravenous; Otter mini-Safari 13\/02\/18"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>As I collected Simon, Judith, Susanna and Phoebe from Newbiggin ahead of an afternoon <a href=\"http:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/tour\/1\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">searching for Otters<\/a> around Druridge Bay the sky darkened and rain turned to sleet turned to snow&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Under an overcast sky with barely a hint of a breeze, the uniform colour of the water made it easy to spot any movement.\u00a0 <em><strong>Goldeneye<\/strong><\/em> and <em><strong>Little Grebe<\/strong><\/em> were diving and I was watching regular ripples emanating from a small bay in the reeds, just below two <em><strong>Roe Deer, <\/strong><\/em>as a <em><strong>Water Rail<\/strong><\/em> poked around another bay.\u00a0 Whatever was causing the ripples remained hidden though, and after admiring a handsome drake <em><strong>Long-tailed Duck<\/strong><\/em> our attention was drawn to <em><strong>Goldeneye<\/strong><\/em> displaying.\u00a0 Head thrown back, bill pointing skywards and then neck outstretched and dipped dramatically, one drake <em><strong>Goldeneye<\/strong><\/em> caught the eye of a duck and they swam along, closely paired.\u00a0 Just beyond them a <em><strong>Coot<\/strong><\/em> wing appeared on the surface of the water.\u00a0 Was it fighting with another <em><strong>Coot<\/strong><\/em>?\u00a0 It vanished below the water&#8217;s surface before reappearing and heading rapidly across the pool like the sail of a yacht.\u00a0 A closer look revealed that it was on it&#8217;s back, feet in the air and moving quickly.\u00a0 It sank again and then when it surfaced we could see the head of the <em><strong>Otter<\/strong><\/em> that was carrying it!\u00a0 As the <em><strong>Otter<\/strong><\/em> neared the reeds her two cubs came out to greet her and they all disappeared into the reeds with the <em><strong>Coot<\/strong><\/em>.\u00a0 After a little while, and as <em><strong>Canada Geese, Greylag Geese<\/strong><\/em> and <em><strong>Whooper Swans<\/strong><\/em> arrived noisily, the cubs were visible as they chased around in the reeds.\u00a0 Then all three <em><strong>Otters<\/strong><\/em> swam across the pool, with the cubs pausing to engage in a play fight before vanishing into the reeds again as the low angled sunlight cast a golden glow over the landscape.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As I collected Simon, Judith, Susanna and Phoebe from Newbiggin ahead of an afternoon searching for Otters around Druridge Bay the sky darkened and rain turned to sleet turned to snow&#8230; Under an overcast sky with barely a hint of a breeze, the uniform colour of the water made it easy to spot any movement.\u00a0 [&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":[560,270,172,168,190,123,68,837,66,161,237,130],"class_list":["post-4241","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-druridge","tag-canada-goose","tag-coot","tag-curlew","tag-goldeneye","tag-greylag-goose","tag-lapwing","tag-long-tailed-duck","tag-otter","tag-roe-deer","tag-starling","tag-water-rail","tag-whooper-swan"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4241","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=4241"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4241\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4243,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4241\/revisions\/4243"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4241"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4241"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4241"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}