{"id":4252,"date":"2018-03-21T10:12:29","date_gmt":"2018-03-21T09:12:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/?p=4252"},"modified":"2018-03-21T10:12:29","modified_gmt":"2018-03-21T09:12:29","slug":"a-raptor-day-bespoke-kielder-safari-20-03-18","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/uncategorized\/a-raptor-day-bespoke-kielder-safari-20-03-18","title":{"rendered":"A raptor day :-) Bespoke Kielder Safari 20\/03\/18"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I collected Sue from Old Swarland for her 7th trip with NEWT and we headed west towards <a href=\"http:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/experiences\/tour\/14\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Kielder<\/a> as the clouds started to break and the blue sky, excellent visibility and light breeze suggested it would be a good day for raptors&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>A <em><strong>Goosander<\/strong><\/em> flew along the course of tiny stream before our first raptor, a male <em><strong>Merlin<\/strong><\/em> cloaked in beautiful blue, dashed low over the road ahead of us as we crossed the moors.\u00a0 <em><strong>Common Buzzards<\/strong><\/em> were either perched or soaring almost everywhere we went during the day and a <em><strong>Sparrowhawk<\/strong><\/em> flew by, pursued by an angry mob of passerines.\u00a0 <em><strong>Carrion Crows<\/strong><\/em> breaking the skyline provided their usual share of false alarms before a tight group of three <em><strong>crows<\/strong><\/em> betrayed the presence of the &#8216;Phantom of the Forest&#8217;.\u00a0 Menacing, muscular and purposeful, the <em><strong>Goshawk<\/strong><\/em> flew just above the tree tops, apparently unfazed by the yelling crows in hot pursuit.\u00a0 <em><strong>Kestrel<\/strong><\/em> made it raptor #5 for the day as <em><strong>Raven<\/strong><\/em>, the honorary raptor, tumbled distantly before another male <em><strong>Merlin<\/strong><\/em>, this time perched on a rock, held our attention as <em><strong>Wild Goats<\/strong><\/em> grazed nearby and then Sue spotted a male <em><strong>Hen Harrier<\/strong><\/em> drifting along a heather-clad ridge above us.\u00a0 The journey home produced raptor #7 as a <em><strong>Peregrine<\/strong><\/em> kept pace with us as it flew along a ridge before perching on a dry stone wall.<\/p>\n<p>Definitely a good raptor day \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I collected Sue from Old Swarland for her 7th trip with NEWT and we headed west towards Kielder as the clouds started to break and the blue sky, excellent visibility and light breeze suggested it would be a good day for raptors&#8230; A Goosander flew along the course of tiny stream before our first raptor, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[272,148,378,164,839,128,56,55,457,131,495],"class_list":["post-4252","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-carrion-crow","tag-common-buzzard","tag-goosander","tag-goshawk","tag-hen-harrier","tag-kestrel","tag-merlin","tag-peregrine","tag-raven","tag-sparrowhawk","tag-wild-goat"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4252","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=4252"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4252\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4254,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4252\/revisions\/4254"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4252"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4252"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4252"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}