{"id":4927,"date":"2020-01-15T15:36:53","date_gmt":"2020-01-15T14:36:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/?p=4927"},"modified":"2020-01-15T15:36:54","modified_gmt":"2020-01-15T14:36:54","slug":"vital-signs-otter-mini-safari-12-01-20","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/northumberland\/druridge\/vital-signs-otter-mini-safari-12-01-20","title":{"rendered":"Vital signs; Otter mini-Safari 12\/01\/20"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

A dual purpose title for today’s blog…<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I collected Fara, Andrew and Nicola & Graeme and Jen from Newbiggin and we set off to explore Druridge Bay and southeast Northumberland<\/a> on a Sunday morning that was thankfully lacking the stiff breeze that has characterised the winter so far…<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Water that was almost mirror-calm was patterned with the concentric circles of diving Little Grebes, Goldeneye<\/em><\/strong> and Cormorants<\/em><\/strong> as a Grey Heron<\/em><\/strong> stood motionless, uncharacteristically obliging, and a Little Egret<\/em><\/strong> darted at small fish in the shallows before flying upstream, followed by noisy Oystercatchers<\/em><\/strong>, into what little breeze there was.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

En route to our second site I thought it would be worth stopping to check for Little Owls<\/em><\/strong>, and one was sitting quietly sunning itself. If you’ve never seen one of these elfin sprites, here’s one of Sarah’s photographs from a few years ago \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Little<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The temperature was starting to drop and a breeze was becoming noticeable as we settled to scan over a pool and reedbeds. Suddenly the Lapwings<\/em><\/strong> all took flight, forming a tight wheeling flock tossed on the breeze as Mallards<\/em><\/strong> turned and stared at one area of reeds. After a couple of minutes the Lapwings<\/em><\/strong> were back down, as the discordant calls of Canada<\/em><\/strong> and Greylag Geese<\/em><\/strong> carried on the breeze and Mallard, Wigeon, Teal, Gadwall, Pintail<\/em><\/strong> and Wigeon<\/em><\/strong> were all dabbling contentedly again. The calm didn’t last long though and the Lapwings<\/em><\/strong> were soon scattering in panic again. The third time they flushed the Mallards<\/em><\/strong> were once again looking at the same reedbed, this time with three Little Grebes<\/em><\/strong> joining with the intense study of a very localised area. Everything we’d look for when searching for Otters<\/em><\/strong> was happening right in front of us…the only thing missing was an appearance by our quarry itself. Here’s an Otter<\/em><\/strong> from January 2015, sporting a very fetching boa of seaweed \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Eurasian<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Lovely clients, lots of photography discussion, great weather and I brought home an owl pellet to dissect \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n\n\n\n

and ‘Vital signs’ as a blog title? It’s a track on Rush’s album Moving Pictures and our tribute to Neil Peart who sadly passed away last week.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A dual purpose title for today’s blog… I collected Fara, Andrew and Nicola & Graeme and Jen from Newbiggin and we set off to explore Druridge Bay and southeast Northumberland on a Sunday morning that was thankfully lacking the stiff breeze that has characterised the winter so far… Water that was almost mirror-calm was patterned […]<\/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":[560,372,170,168,283,190,123,243,72,171,210,179,169,181],"class_list":["post-4927","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-druridge","category-southeast-northumberland","tag-canada-goose","tag-cormorant","tag-gadwall","tag-goldeneye","tag-grey-heron","tag-greylag-goose","tag-lapwing","tag-little-egret","tag-little-owl","tag-mallard","tag-oystercatcher","tag-pintail","tag-teal","tag-wigeon"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4927","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=4927"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4927\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4929,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4927\/revisions\/4929"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4927"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4927"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4927"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}