There was a gentle breeze as I collected Nigel, Corina, Victoria and Rob from Longframlington and we headed towards the coast for a day around Druridge Bay and southeast Northumberland…<\/p>\n
Waders and wildfowl were in abundance, as they tend to be in the late autumn.\u00a0 A huge roosting flock of Golden Plover<\/strong><\/em> and Lapwing<\/strong><\/em> were restless and vocal and Redshank, Dunlin<\/strong><\/em> and a lone Curlew<\/strong><\/em> were sleeping until disturbed by a marauding Sparrowhawk<\/strong><\/em>.\u00a0 Drake Shovelers<\/strong><\/em> and a lone drake Scaup<\/strong><\/em> were still patchy, coming out of eclipse plumage, a flock of Eider<\/strong><\/em> flying north over white foaming surf on a strengthening easterly contained a mix of females, young males and a couple of pristine adult males and Mallard, Wigeon, Tufted Duck, Red-breasted Merganser<\/strong><\/em> and Teal<\/strong><\/em> drakes were all sporting their very best finery.<\/p>\n Our picnic spot was graced by a Kestrel<\/strong><\/em> hanging on the stiff breeze so close that we could see how he held his head stationary while making minor movements of wings, body and tail.\u00a0 An apparent absence of small birds was suddenly broken by a noisy foraging flock of Great, Coal, Blue<\/strong><\/em> and Long-tailed Tits<\/strong><\/em>.\u00a0 Hunched against the wind, a Grey Heron<\/strong><\/em> looked even more miserable than they usually do and, as Little Egrets<\/strong><\/em> shone in the gloom, at least 20 Little Grebes<\/strong><\/em>, including a group of 12 together, were along one stretch of river.\u00a0 With dusk fast approaching a noisy mixed flock of Canada, Greylag<\/strong><\/em> and Pink-footed Geese<\/strong><\/em> arrived to roost as Starlings<\/strong><\/em> passed by in small groups, foregoing the murmuration in favour of a quick dash to the reeds and Whooper Swans<\/strong><\/em> trumpeted their own arrival and the light faded to a barely penetrable gloom.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" There was a gentle breeze as I collected Nigel, Corina, Victoria and Rob from Longframlington and we headed towards the coast for a day around Druridge Bay and southeast Northumberland… Waders and wildfowl were in abundance, as they tend to be in the late autumn.\u00a0 A huge roosting flock of Golden Plover and Lapwing were […]<\/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":[46,560,101,221,556,172,175,168,45,283,190,128,123,243,360,121,171,129,188,318,131,161,169,182,130,181],"class_list":["post-4697","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-druridge","tag-blue-tit","tag-canada-goose","tag-coal-tit","tag-common-eider","tag-common-redshank","tag-curlew","tag-golden-plover","tag-goldeneye","tag-great-tit","tag-grey-heron","tag-greylag-goose","tag-kestrel","tag-lapwing","tag-little-egret","tag-little-grebe","tag-long-tailed-tit","tag-mallard","tag-pink-footed-goose","tag-red-breasted-merganser","tag-scaup","tag-sparrowhawk","tag-starling","tag-teal","tag-tufted-duck","tag-whooper-swan","tag-wigeon"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4697","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=4697"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4697\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4699,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4697\/revisions\/4699"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4697"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4697"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4697"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}