{"id":4834,"date":"2019-07-17T08:32:09","date_gmt":"2019-07-17T07:32:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/?p=4834"},"modified":"2019-07-17T08:32:54","modified_gmt":"2019-07-17T07:32:54","slug":"under-the-moonlight-otter-mini-safari-15-07-19","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/northumberland\/druridge\/under-the-moonlight-otter-mini-safari-15-07-19","title":{"rendered":"Under the moonlight; Otter mini-Safari 15\/07\/19"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Arriving in Newbiggin to collect Dave and Dawn ahead of an evening around Druridge Bay and southeast Northumberland<\/a> exploring NEWT’s favourite <\/a>Otter<\/a><\/em><\/strong> sites<\/a> I smiled when Dave said “We have no idea what the plan is or what’s happening. Our daughter just told us to be here to meet you”…<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We started with our usual riparian woodland walk, and Dave spotted a Dipper<\/em><\/strong> sitting quietly on a mid-stream rock. It started preening and bathing and then took a few short swims underwater before flying off upstream.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With a gentle breeze cooling the warmth of the Sun, Reed Warblers<\/em><\/strong> and Sedge Warblers<\/em><\/strong> were putting in brief appearances in the reeds, Reed Buntings<\/em><\/strong> were singing their simple song, flocks of Starlings<\/em><\/strong> flew to roost and a dense flock of Sand Martins<\/em><\/strong> alternated between gorging themselves on flies and perching along the face of a reedbed as a Barn Owl<\/em><\/strong> quartered the dunes before flying past us carrying prey.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A Spotted Redshank<\/em><\/strong> feeding frantically in the shallows joined a mass panic as Curlews, Avocets<\/em><\/strong> and Lapwings<\/em><\/strong> took to the air before gradually settling back down as Grey Herons<\/em><\/strong> and a Little Egret<\/em><\/strong> darted at small fish. Scanning around the edge of the water I noticed a swirl lingering close to a reedbed and then all of the waders took flight again. For a few minutes all we could see were the ripples from something disturbing the water in a gap in the reeds…and then the Otter<\/em><\/strong> swam into view \ud83d\ude42 We watched it for around 30 minutes before it vanished into a reedbed as the full Moon<\/em><\/strong> rose, flanked by Jupiter<\/em><\/strong> and Saturn<\/em><\/strong>, and the Barn Owl<\/em><\/strong> perched on a pole near the car and almost directly in front of the Moon<\/em><\/strong> \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Arriving in Newbiggin to collect Dave and Dawn ahead of an evening around Druridge Bay and southeast Northumberland exploring NEWT’s favourite Otter sites I smiled when Dave said “We have no idea what the plan is or what’s happening. Our daughter just told us to be here to meet you”… We started with our usual […]<\/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":[40,97,172,257,228,283,703,123,243,798,837,127,267,790,227,357,161],"class_list":["post-4834","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-druridge","category-otter","tag-avocet","tag-barn-owl","tag-curlew","tag-dipper","tag-grasshopper-warbler","tag-grey-heron","tag-jupiter","tag-lapwing","tag-little-egret","tag-moon","tag-otter","tag-reed-bunting","tag-reed-warbler","tag-saturn","tag-sedge-warbler","tag-spotted-redshank","tag-starling"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4834","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=4834"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4834\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4837,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4834\/revisions\/4837"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4834"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4834"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4834"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}