Great Spotted Woodpecker<\/em><\/strong> that had found a reliable food source on mid-stream rocks. We couldn’t see what she was collecting but every few minutes she headed off into the trees with a beak full of food before returning to the edge of the water.<\/p>\n\n\n\nAvocets<\/em><\/strong> were next up and, as well as a cacophony of alarm calls every time a Carrion Crow<\/em><\/strong> flew by, they were taking a dim view of Grey Herons<\/em><\/strong>. One Avocet<\/em><\/strong> in particular had singled out a heron<\/em><\/strong> that it harrassed, flapped it’s wings at and continued pursuing even as the heron<\/em><\/strong> walked away not even bothering to give it a moment’s attention. As Brown Hares<\/em><\/strong> loped through a rushy marsh a Barn Owl<\/em><\/strong> ghosted by just a few metres away from us.<\/p>\n\n\n\nWith a stunning sunset developing and bathing everything in beautiful low-angled light I spotted an Otter<\/em><\/strong> briefly in almost the same spot where I’d first spotted one on Sunday evening. Mute Swan<\/em><\/strong> threat posture and agitated Canada Geese<\/em><\/strong> gave us a good idea of where it was, but frustratingly it remained hidden from sight. Something did come out of the reeds though – a Roe Deer<\/em><\/strong> that waded through shallow water onto an island, followed by a second deer<\/em><\/strong>. After a couple of lengths of the island they continued into the water before returning to the island for a few minutes and then out into the water again, this time with the water getting deeper until just their heads were visible as they swam across the pool with a flock of Black-headed Gulls<\/em><\/strong> directly above them. As they reached the shallows they were suddenly running at breakneck speed out of the water, up the bank, through a hedge and out of sight.<\/p>\n\n\n\nI’ll leave the final word to Chris, with his punchline to our discussion about what the benefit was to the deer<\/em><\/strong> of crossing water rather than just walking around the edge of the pool, which would have been quicker. “To get the the Otter side” \ud83d\ude09<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Some days are memorable because of the volume of wildlife we encounter, and then there are the days when what the wildlife is doing defies belief… I collected Sarah, and then Chris and Alex, from Newbiggin and we headed off for an afternoon and evening around Druridge Bay and southeast Northumberland. Our regular riverside walk […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,139],"tags":[40,97,978,461,57,25,283,140,66,269,338],"class_list":["post-4786","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-druridge","category-southeast-northumberland","tag-avocet","tag-barn-owl","tag-bat","tag-blackcap","tag-brown-hare","tag-great-spotted-woodpecker","tag-grey-heron","tag-linnet","tag-roe-deer","tag-shoveler","tag-treecreeper"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4786","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=4786"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4786\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4787,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4786\/revisions\/4787"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4786"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4786"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4786"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}