{"id":4487,"date":"2018-08-05T11:18:53","date_gmt":"2018-08-05T10:18:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/?p=4487"},"modified":"2018-08-05T13:01:36","modified_gmt":"2018-08-05T12:01:36","slug":"a-storm-of-puffins-druridge-bay-bespoke-birdwatching-30-07-18","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/northumberland\/druridge\/a-storm-of-puffins-druridge-bay-bespoke-birdwatching-30-07-18","title":{"rendered":"A Storm of Puffins; Druridge Bay Bespoke Birdwatching 30\/07\/18"},"content":{"rendered":"

Wouldn’t that be a great title for the next book in the ‘A Song of Ice and Fire’ series (Game of Thrones)?\u00a0 I’ve met a few people over the last 10 years who expected Puffins<\/strong><\/em> to be much larger than they actually are, so the idea of unleashing a horde of them on your enemies could have some merit…<\/p>\n

Alex, Jess and Tom had booked two days out with us – Saturday and Sunday – both of which had a forecast that couldn’t have been clearer that we wouldn’t be able to sail either around Coquet Island or to the Farnes<\/a> so we’d hastily rescheduled to Monday and Tuesday, with ‘gentler’ sea conditions forecast.\u00a0 I collected them from Embleton and we headed south down the coast to our local patch, Druridge Bay and southeast Northumberland,<\/a> pausing at Cullernose Point to have a look at the Kittiwakes<\/strong><\/em> and Fulmars<\/strong><\/em>.<\/p>\n

Late July is a great time to watch waders on the Northumberland coast and Avocet, Dunlin, Knot, Curlew Sandpiper, Ruff, Lapwing, Common Snipe, Curlew, Common Redshank, Black-tailed Godwit, Bar-tailed Godwit, Ringed Plover<\/strong><\/em> and Little Ringed Plover<\/strong><\/em> were all impressive, but outshone by a stunning summer-plumaged Grey Plover<\/strong><\/em>.\u00a0 A Little Owl was perched quietly by a farm building and our next port of call brought a Little Gull<\/strong><\/em> and an Otter<\/strong><\/em> that was feeding next to some apparently unconcerned Mute Swans<\/strong><\/em> and some very concerned Tufted Ducks<\/strong><\/em> \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n

Then it was time to head off for a sailing around Coquet Island with Dave Gray’s Puffin Cruises<\/a>.\u00a0 The stiff southeasterly and a bit of swell meant a very steady crossing was in order.\u00a0 As we sailed along the Coquet a raft of 27 Goosanders<\/strong><\/em> were near the Warkworth side of the river and as we made the short sea crossing Puffins, Sandwich, Arctic<\/strong><\/em> and Common Terns<\/strong><\/em> and Grey Seals<\/strong><\/em> began to appear.\u00a0 Ghostly pale Roseate Terns<\/strong><\/em> were sitting on the nesting terraces that have been constructed for them and one or two were picked out as they flew by as a veritable storm of Puffins<\/strong><\/em> whirled around above the island.<\/p>\n

Heading back home at the end of the afternoon I was looking forward to an evening at the Battlesteads Observatory and then Tuesday’s trip to Inner Farne.\u00a0 I was starting to feel a bit peaky though, but that’s a whole other story…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Wouldn’t that be a great title for the next book in the ‘A Song of Ice and Fire’ series (Game of Thrones)?\u00a0 I’ve met a few people over the last 10 years who expected Puffins to be much larger than they actually are, so the idea of unleashing a horde of them on your enemies […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[275,9],"tags":[230,40,147,242,373,229,172,557,288,122,378,400,835,301,334,123,93,72,541,178,837,225,224,274,223,182],"class_list":["post-4487","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-coquet-island","category-druridge","tag-arctic-tern","tag-avocet","tag-bar-tailed-godwit","tag-black-tailed-godwit","tag-common-snipe","tag-common-tern","tag-curlew","tag-curlew-sandpiper","tag-dunlin","tag-fulmar","tag-goosander","tag-grey-plover","tag-grey-seal","tag-kittiwake","tag-knot","tag-lapwing","tag-little-gull","tag-little-owl","tag-little-ringed-plover","tag-mute-swan","tag-otter","tag-puffin","tag-ringed-plover","tag-roseate-tern","tag-sandwich-tern","tag-tufted-duck"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4487","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=4487"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4487\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4495,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4487\/revisions\/4495"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4487"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4487"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4487"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}