{"id":4701,"date":"2018-11-21T12:18:32","date_gmt":"2018-11-21T11:18:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/?p=4701"},"modified":"2018-11-21T12:18:32","modified_gmt":"2018-11-21T11:18:32","slug":"a-hard-act-to-swallow-otter-safari-20-11-18","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/northumberland\/druridge\/a-hard-act-to-swallow-otter-safari-20-11-18","title":{"rendered":"A hard act to swallow; Otter Safari 20\/11\/18"},"content":{"rendered":"

In March last year I was knocked off my bike by a car in Bedlington (which is our local town).\u00a0 The day after the incident, I posted in our local Facebook group, thanking everyone who helped me.\u00a0 “I don’t know if they’re in this group but I’d just like to say a huge thank you to the people who looked after me until the paramedics and police arrived after I was knocked off my bike opposite the market place, especially the lady who held my hand and talked to me.<\/span><\/span>..Laid in the road, unable to move your head and with one leg twisted painfully, is a scary experience so it’s hard to put into words how much it helped having people who stopped the traffic, held my hand, talked to me and kept me calm.”<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

I collected Stephanie and Gary yesterday, just up the road from the NEWT office and Stephanie said “My friend Leigh was the one who held your hand when you were knocked off your bike.” and told me that Leigh decided to train as a first-aider after helping me \ud83d\ude42\u00a0 Bedlington and it’s surrounding villages is a small world…and then we headed to Newbiggin to collect Susanne and Leanne.\u00a0 As they walked across the car park towards us, Leanne looked familiar – one of my chemistry students from 14 years ago!\u00a0 Small world indeed!<\/p>\n

We headed out to explore Druridge Bay<\/a> and southeast Northumberland in search of Otters<\/a> and, from the state of the sea crashing against the breakwaters of Newbiggin Bay it looked like the wind would present a challenge for the day.\u00a0 The rest of the day was a series of squally showers, increasing in intensity as the day progressed.\u00a0 Noisy flocks of Long-tailed Tits<\/strong><\/em> foraged in pathside trees and Cormorant, Little Grebe, Red-breasted Merganser<\/strong><\/em> and Goldeneye<\/strong><\/em> were diving in search of fish.<\/p>\n

A Cormorant<\/strong><\/em> managed to generate a false alarm as it wrestled with a large Eel<\/strong><\/em> – the bird’s black body and the tail of the fish combining to do a remarkable impression of an Otter<\/strong><\/em> fishing with it’s tail up out of the water \ud83d\ude42\u00a0 Having managed to swallow the Eel<\/strong><\/em>, the Cormorant<\/strong><\/em> caught an even larger one a few minutes later and we were able to watch as it tossed the Eel<\/strong><\/em> until eventually grabbing it around the head and swallowing it in one go.\u00a0 That was followed by a couple of minutes of watching the Cormorant’s<\/strong><\/em> neck bulging and writhing as it struggled to get the Eel<\/strong><\/em> down into it’s stomach.\u00a0 Incredibly it started fishing again straight away and caught and swallowed a much smaller Eel<\/strong><\/em>.<\/p>\n

A theme in the last couple of weeks has been Sparrowhawks<\/strong><\/em> causing consternation among roosting wader and wildfowl flocks, and yesterday was no exception.\u00a0 Knot, Dunlin, Redshank, Lapwing, Golden Plover, Curlew, Teal, Mallard, Gadwall<\/strong><\/em> and Wigeon<\/strong><\/em> all took flight repeatedly before the Sparrowhawk<\/strong><\/em> eventually flew past us.\u00a0 A dense flock of Kittiwakes<\/strong><\/em> flew along over huge rolling waves and foaming surf and as Starlings, Lapwings<\/strong><\/em> and Golden Plover<\/strong><\/em> struggled against the strengthening breeze and geese<\/strong><\/em> arrived to roost the next squall took the light levels from challenging to near dark in a matter of minutes and we headed back toward he bright lights of Newbiggin \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In March last year I was knocked off my bike by a car in Bedlington (which is our local town).\u00a0 The day after the incident, I posted in our local Facebook group, thanking everyone who helped me.\u00a0 “I don’t know if they’re in this group but I’d just like to say a huge thank you […]<\/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":[556,372,172,288,345,170,175,168,334,123,360,121,171,188,131,169,181],"class_list":["post-4701","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-druridge","tag-common-redshank","tag-cormorant","tag-curlew","tag-dunlin","tag-eel","tag-gadwall","tag-golden-plover","tag-goldeneye","tag-knot","tag-lapwing","tag-little-grebe","tag-long-tailed-tit","tag-mallard","tag-red-breasted-merganser","tag-sparrowhawk","tag-teal","tag-wigeon"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4701","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=4701"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4701\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4703,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4701\/revisions\/4703"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4701"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4701"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4701"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}