{"id":4583,"date":"2018-08-28T15:32:47","date_gmt":"2018-08-28T14:32:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/?p=4583"},"modified":"2018-08-28T18:17:05","modified_gmt":"2018-08-28T17:17:05","slug":"between-a-rock-and-a-hard-place-druridge-bay-safari-25-08-18","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/uncategorized\/between-a-rock-and-a-hard-place-druridge-bay-safari-25-08-18","title":{"rendered":"Between a rock and a hard place; Druridge Bay Safari 25\/08\/18"},"content":{"rendered":"

I collected Barbara and Jeff from Newbiggin and we set off for an afternoon and evening around Druridge Bay and southeast Northumberland<\/a> in conditions that felt slightly cooler than of late…<\/p>\n

A walk along the Wansbeck brought 2 Green Sandpipers<\/strong><\/em>, 2 Greenshank<\/strong><\/em>, Mute Swans<\/strong><\/em>, Canada Geese<\/strong><\/em>, Mallard, Lapwing, Curlew, 2 Little Egrets<\/strong><\/em> and some delicious blackberries and sea buckthorn \ud83d\ude42\u00a0 Grey Herons<\/strong><\/em> were tussling over favoured feeding spots and our picnic stop overlooking the North Sea produced lines of Gannets<\/strong><\/em> heading north, distant Manx<\/strong><\/em> and Sooty Shearwaters<\/strong><\/em>, a raft of Eider<\/strong><\/em> in the gentle rolling swell just offshore and a feeding frenzy around the edge of the rising tide were startled by a skua<\/strong><\/em>; Turnstone, Ringed Plover, Common Redshank<\/strong><\/em>, Dunlin<\/strong><\/em> and a noisy swirling flock of Black-headed Gulls<\/strong><\/em> were accompanied by at least 8 Mediterranean Gulls<\/strong><\/em> as Fulmars<\/strong><\/em> soared by on stiff wings.<\/p>\n

More waders and more herons followed, and then Little Grebe, Great Crested Grebe<\/strong><\/em> and Tufted Duck,<\/strong><\/em> in sublime low angled sunlight, and a variety of bumblebees<\/strong><\/em> and hoverflies<\/strong><\/em> becoming slower as the temperature started to really drop.\u00a0 A Barn Owl<\/strong><\/em> quartered the dunes before settling first on the ground, then a telegraph pole then a fence post, offering great views in flight and then through the telescope when it was perched.\u00a0 A Sparrowhawk<\/strong><\/em> hedge-hopped just ahead of us and 2 Little Owls<\/strong><\/em> had made their way out on to the edge of a roof and a stone wall as dusk approached and our final stop saw us watching a dense roosting flock of geese<\/strong><\/em> and some very vocal Black-tailed Godwits<\/strong><\/em> as hundreds of Greylag Geese<\/strong><\/em> suddenly appeared out of the gloom and settled in for the night and the bright triumvirate of Jupiter, Saturn<\/strong><\/em> and Mars<\/strong><\/em> were spread across the southern sky.<\/p>\n

Probably the best moment of the day was when a Brown Hare<\/strong><\/em> leveret loped along the track ahead of us before darting up a narrow tree-lined footpath, only to come back out and sit just a few feet from the car!\u00a0 What could be scarier than a car bearing down on you?\u00a0 The answer, in this case, was a Woodpigeon<\/strong><\/em> that was blocking the hare’<\/strong><\/em>s escape route \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I collected Barbara and Jeff from Newbiggin and we set off for an afternoon and evening around Druridge Bay and southeast Northumberland in conditions that felt slightly cooler than of late… A walk along the Wansbeck brought 2 Green Sandpipers, 2 Greenshank, Mute Swans, Canada Geese, Mallard, Lapwing, Curlew, 2 Little Egrets and some delicious […]<\/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":[97,271,57,506,959,172,288,149,488,333,332,283,505,703,123,243,360,72,364,792,193,178,224,790,581,365,131,182,359,158],"class_list":["post-4583","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-barn-owl","tag-black-headed-gull","tag-brown-hare","tag-canada-geese","tag-common-redshhank","tag-curlew","tag-dunlin","tag-eider","tag-great-crested-grebe","tag-green-sandpiper","tag-greenshank","tag-grey-heron","tag-greylag-geese","tag-jupiter","tag-lapwing","tag-little-egret","tag-little-grebe","tag-little-owl","tag-manx-shearwater","tag-mars","tag-mediterranean-gull","tag-mute-swan","tag-ringed-plover","tag-saturn","tag-skua","tag-sooty-shearwater","tag-sparrowhawk","tag-tufted-duck","tag-turnstone","tag-woodpigeon"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4583","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=4583"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4583\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4589,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4583\/revisions\/4589"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4583"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4583"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4583"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}