{"id":4341,"date":"2018-06-18T15:22:53","date_gmt":"2018-06-18T14:22:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/?p=4341"},"modified":"2018-06-18T15:22:53","modified_gmt":"2018-06-18T14:22:53","slug":"in-the-wake-of-hector-bespoke-druridge-bay-safari-15-06-18","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/northumberland\/druridge\/in-the-wake-of-hector-bespoke-druridge-bay-safari-15-06-18","title":{"rendered":"In the wake of Hector; Bespoke Druridge Bay Safari 15\/06\/18"},"content":{"rendered":"

I collected Alison and Paul from Amble and we set out for an afternoon and evening exploring Druridge Bay and southeast Northumberland<\/a>, in search of Otters<\/strong><\/em> and Badgers<\/strong><\/em>…<\/p>\n

One Otter<\/strong><\/em> site had to be removed from our itinerary after a walk along it on Thursday, following the passing of Storm Hector, had revealed a path deep in leaves, branches, twigs and, in some places, blocked by fallen trees \ud83d\ude41\u00a0 There was still a keen breeze and Otters<\/strong><\/em> seemed to be keeping their heads down although a commotion at one corner of a pool saw sheep scattering and Canada Geese<\/strong><\/em> taking to panicked flight.\u00a0 Goldeneye<\/strong><\/em> and Tufted Duck<\/strong><\/em> were diving and offering an interesting ID comparison, Black-tailed Godwits<\/strong><\/em> were probing the mud beneath shallow marshes as Sedge Warbler, Reed Warbler<\/strong><\/em> and Reed Bunting<\/strong><\/em> only put in brief cameo appearances before diving back into cover and 2 Spoonbills<\/strong><\/em> were doing that typical Spoonbill thing of having an afternoon nap.\u00a0 A Grey Heron<\/strong><\/em>, approaching with lumbering flight, triggered an extraordinary response from Lapwings, Common Redshank, Dunlin<\/strong><\/em> and no less than 19 Avocets <\/strong><\/em>who all took to the air and subjected it to an onslaught from all sides.\u00a0 As calm began to settle, minor skirmishes involving Avocets<\/strong><\/em> and Shelduck<\/strong><\/em> began to break out and a Brown Hare<\/strong><\/em> loped across a distant field with an ever-growing Starling<\/strong><\/em> murmuration above it.<\/p>\n

With dusk approaching we headed off to our regular Badger<\/strong><\/em> sett, and more post-storm destruction.\u00a0 Broken branches, twigs and leaves littered the footpath, bushes and trees were bent over and the whole area around the sett looked as though it had taken a real pounding.\u00a0 Song Thrushes<\/strong><\/em> were singing, Blackbird, Robin<\/strong><\/em> and Wren<\/strong><\/em> were alarm calling as light levels continued to fall and pipistrelles<\/strong><\/em> flew back and forth in front of us, and an unidentified mammal ran across in front of us, then suddenly all was silent for a few minutes until the tremulous hooting of a Tawny Owl<\/strong><\/em> cut through the gloom beneath the woodland canopy and we could hear twigs snapping as something explored the undergrowth close to the sett entrance but remained frustratingly hidden from view.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I collected Alison and Paul from Amble and we set out for an afternoon and evening exploring Druridge Bay and southeast Northumberland, in search of Otters and Badgers… One Otter site had to be removed from our itinerary after a walk along it on Thursday, following the passing of Storm Hector, had revealed a path […]<\/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":[40,242,57,560,556,270,288,168,283,123,198,178,292,127,267,116,227,189,145,161,78,182,945],"class_list":["post-4341","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-druridge","tag-avocet","tag-black-tailed-godwit","tag-brown-hare","tag-canada-goose","tag-common-redshank","tag-coot","tag-dunlin","tag-goldeneye","tag-grey-heron","tag-lapwing","tag-moorhen","tag-mute-swan","tag-pipistrelle","tag-reed-bunting","tag-reed-warbler","tag-robin","tag-sedge-warbler","tag-shelduck","tag-song-thrush","tag-starling","tag-tawny-owl","tag-tufted-duck","tag-wrenspoonbill"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4341","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=4341"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4341\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4343,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4341\/revisions\/4343"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4341"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4341"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4341"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}