{"id":4621,"date":"2018-09-07T08:09:55","date_gmt":"2018-09-07T07:09:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/?p=4621"},"modified":"2018-09-07T08:09:55","modified_gmt":"2018-09-07T07:09:55","slug":"deluge-otter-safari-06-09-18","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/northumberland\/druridge\/deluge-otter-safari-06-09-18","title":{"rendered":"Deluge; Otter Safari 06\/09\/18"},"content":{"rendered":"

Our second Otter Safari<\/a> in 2 days looked as thought it was unlikely to be blessed with the same good weather as Wednesday…<\/p>\n

I collected Alison and then Amanda and David from Newbiggin and we set off for an afternoon and evening around Druridge Bay<\/a> and southeast Northumberland searching for Otters<\/a>.\u00a0 When the Otters<\/strong><\/em> eluded us on Wednesday I’d seen enough at each site we checked to be confident that we’d find Otters<\/strong><\/em> this time, and thought that changing the order we visited each site would do the trick…and within a minute of arriving at our first site I’d picked a likely spot for an Otter<\/strong><\/em> – and there was one \ud83d\ude42\u00a0 In fact there were two, and they caused some consternation among Little Grebes<\/strong><\/em>, Tufted Ducks,<\/strong> Mallards<\/strong><\/em> and Greylag Geese<\/strong><\/em> before vanishing.\u00a0 Alison hadn’t managed to spot either of them through the ‘scope so I pointed it in the direction of a Water Rail<\/strong><\/em> and let everyone marvel at the odd-looking denizen of the reedbed while I scoured the entire pool trying to relocate the Otters<\/strong><\/em>.\u00a0 Amanda beat me too it though, about ten minutes after we lost sight of the Otters<\/strong><\/em> one appeared right in front of us!\u00a0 It slowly made it’s way across the pool, scattering Mute Swans, Little Grebes, Cormorants, Gadwall, Wigeon, Teal, Mallard<\/strong><\/em> and Canada Geese<\/strong><\/em> before finally vanishing into the dark depths of a distant reedbed.\u00a0 All of this was going on with a noisy backdrop of Lapwings, Common Redshank<\/strong><\/em> and geese<\/strong><\/em> as Starlings<\/strong><\/em> swirled overhead and 3 Spotted Redshank<\/strong><\/em>, dashingly elegant, raced through the shallows.\u00a0 We could see heavy rain away to the north, and the first few drops began to disturb the calm water.\u00a0 Up to that point there hadn’t even been a hint of a breeze but that changed and suddenly the wind was very noticeable, as was the arrival of the heavy rain; torrential rain that flooded the roads along the coast and made observing anything quite difficult although three Spotted Redshank<\/strong><\/em>, looking remarkably like the same three from earlier in the afternoon dropped in – were they making their way south down the Northumberland coast the same way we were?\u00a0 A remarkable 123 Mediterranean Gulls<\/strong><\/em> settled on the water as the rain intensified, and as we continued down the coast there were more in fields and along the shoreline.<\/p>\n

Dusk began to creep up sooner than expected under a leaden grey sky with a remarkable fiery orange sunset on the western horizon as a Grey Heron<\/strong><\/em> caught an impressive fish in shallow water, a Kingfisher<\/strong><\/em> flew by, Little Egrets<\/strong><\/em> stood out in the deepening gloom and it was time to head back to Newbiggin.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Our second Otter Safari in 2 days looked as thought it was unlikely to be blessed with the same good weather as Wednesday… I collected Alison and then Amanda and David from Newbiggin and we set off for an afternoon and evening around Druridge Bay and southeast Northumberland searching for Otters.\u00a0 When the Otters eluded […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,21],"tags":[560,556,372,170,283,190,120,123,243,360,193,178,837,357,161,169,182,237,181],"class_list":["post-4621","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-druridge","category-otter","tag-canada-goose","tag-common-redshank","tag-cormorant","tag-gadwall","tag-grey-heron","tag-greylag-goose","tag-kingfisher","tag-lapwing","tag-little-egret","tag-little-grebe","tag-mediterranean-gull","tag-mute-swan","tag-otter","tag-spotted-redshank","tag-starling","tag-teal","tag-tufted-duck","tag-water-rail","tag-wigeon"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4621","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=4621"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4621\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4623,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4621\/revisions\/4623"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4621"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4621"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4621"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}