{"id":4383,"date":"2018-07-04T08:39:03","date_gmt":"2018-07-04T07:39:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/?p=4383"},"modified":"2018-07-04T08:39:03","modified_gmt":"2018-07-04T07:39:03","slug":"hustle-and-bustle-bespoke-druridge-bay-mini-safari-03-07-18","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/northumberland\/druridge\/hustle-and-bustle-bespoke-druridge-bay-mini-safari-03-07-18","title":{"rendered":"Hustle and bustle; Bespoke Druridge Bay mini-Safari 03\/07\/18"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Sometimes you just know it&#8217;s going to be a good trip, and as I collected Anne and Ron from Whitley Bay for an evening around <a href=\"http:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/experiences\/tour\/12\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Druridge Bay<\/a> the blue sky, sunshine and gentle breeze had me thinking this was going to be a great time to be out in the field&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>A <em><strong>Barn Owl<\/strong><\/em> quartering along the roadside and then hovering over the dunes, stunning in the golden light, was a fantastic start to the trip as <em><strong>Avocets<\/strong><\/em> flew by before settling back down.\u00a0 A brood of 5 fairly large <em><strong>Water Rails<\/strong><\/em> was an unexpected sight as they came out into the open, close to a <em><strong>Tufted Duck<\/strong><\/em> with a large brood of tiny ducklings,\u00a0 before dashing nervously back in to the cover of the reeds.\u00a0 <em><strong>Mallard, Gadwall<\/strong><\/em> and <em><strong>Mute Swan<\/strong><\/em> were all dabbling for food beneath dense clouds of flying insects and then our attention was grabbed by a tight circling flock of <em><strong>Black-headed Gulls, Common Terns<\/strong><\/em> and <em><strong>Arctic Terns<\/strong><\/em>&#8230;directly above an <em><strong>Otter<\/strong><\/em> \ud83d\ude42\u00a0 Each time the <em><strong>Otter<\/strong><\/em> surfaced the birds repositioned themselves directly above it and we tracked it&#8217;s progress between <em><strong>Mute Swans<\/strong><\/em> and <em><strong>Cormorants<\/strong><\/em>.\u00a0 Then the birds found another target and began pestering <em><strong>Grey Herons<\/strong><\/em>.\u00a0 Each time a <em><strong>gull<\/strong><\/em> or <em><strong>tern<\/strong><\/em> dived at the <em><strong>heron<\/strong><\/em> it flattened it&#8217;s back, opened it&#8217;s beak wide and let out a raucous cry.\u00a0 Every so often the attack would cease, before starting up again with renewed vigour and new recruits.<\/p>\n<p>Our journey back down the coast brought another new species for the evening as a <em><strong>Brown Hare<\/strong><\/em> dashed out of the verge along the road and then back into the deep grass.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Sometimes you just know it&#8217;s going to be a good trip, and as I collected Anne and Ron from Whitley Bay for an evening around Druridge Bay the blue sky, sunshine and gentle breeze had me thinking this was going to be a great time to be out in the field&#8230; A Barn Owl quartering [&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":[230,40,97,271,57,229,283,171,837,182,237],"class_list":["post-4383","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-druridge","tag-arctic-tern","tag-avocet","tag-barn-owl","tag-black-headed-gull","tag-brown-hare","tag-common-tern","tag-grey-heron","tag-mallard","tag-otter","tag-tufted-duck","tag-water-rail"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4383","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=4383"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4383\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4385,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4383\/revisions\/4385"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4383"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4383"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4383"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}