{"id":4966,"date":"2020-08-21T10:25:41","date_gmt":"2020-08-21T09:25:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/?p=4966"},"modified":"2020-08-21T10:29:35","modified_gmt":"2020-08-21T09:29:35","slug":"druridge-bay-mini-safari-20-08-2020","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/northumberland\/druridge\/druridge-bay-mini-safari-20-08-2020","title":{"rendered":"Wading through the sublime light; Druridge Bay mini-Safari 20\/08\/2020"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I arrived to meet Paul and Helen ahead of a few hours around <a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"http:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/experiences\/tour\/12\" target=\"_blank\">Druridge Bay<\/a> and we set off to walk south along the coast&#8230;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">A mixed wader\/gull\/tern roost produced <strong><em>Lapwing, Golden Plover, Dunlin, Knot, Ruff, Black-tailed Godwit, Little Ringed Plover, Common Redshank, Spotted Redshank, Sandwich Tern and Common, Black-headed, Herring<\/em><\/strong> and <strong><em>Great Black-backed Gull<\/em><\/strong> as <strong><em>Grey Herons<\/em><\/strong> stalked the water&#8217;s edge and three <strong><em>Marsh Harriers<\/em><\/strong> quartered back and forth along the reeds.  The waders all lifted a couple of times and <strong><em>Teal, Mallard, Gadwall, Shoveler<\/em><\/strong> and <strong><em>Coot<\/em><\/strong> all looked panicky but we couldn&#8217;t see what was causing all of the concern. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong><em>Starlings<\/em><\/strong> were roosting among the waders and a large flock speckled the sky before heading away out of sight to the north as <strong><em>Stonechats<\/em><\/strong> and <strong><em>Linnets<\/em><\/strong> perched on top of scattered bushed in the dunes, beautifully illuminated by low angle diffuse sunlight.  One male <strong><em>Stonechat<\/em><\/strong> was sharing a prominent perch with an undeniably cute juvenile <strong><em>Common Whitethroat<\/em><\/strong> and the raucous calls of <strong><em>Pheasant<\/em><\/strong> came from rough pasture as Silver Y moths were nectaring busily on <strong><em>Red Clover<\/em><\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">With the Sun setting away to the west, and the <strong><em>Summer Triangle<\/em><\/strong> of <strong><em>Vega<\/em><\/strong>, <strong><em>Altair<\/em><\/strong> and <strong><em>Deneb<\/em><\/strong> about to  make an appearance through a break in the clouds, a <strong><em>Sparrowhawk<\/em><\/strong> flew low over the dunes and a <strong><em>Barn Owl<\/em><\/strong> ghosted across the path ahead of us before making its way along dips in the dunes and eventually heading away north as daylight faded to darkness and the calls of <strong><em>Greylag Geese<\/em><\/strong> coming to roost accompanied our departure.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I arrived to meet Paul and Helen ahead of a few hours around Druridge Bay and we set off to walk south along the coast&#8230; A mixed wader\/gull\/tern roost produced Lapwing, Golden Plover, Dunlin, Knot, Ruff, Black-tailed Godwit, Little Ringed Plover, Common Redshank, Spotted Redshank, Sandwich Tern and Common, Black-headed, Herring and Great Black-backed Gull [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[813,97,242,277,593,270,911,288,170,175,375,283,190,143,334,123,140,541,171,397,127,241,223,269,370,131,161,215,811,169,800],"class_list":["post-4966","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-druridge","tag-altair","tag-barn-owl","tag-black-tailed-godwit","tag-common-gull","tag-common-whitethroat","tag-coot","tag-deneb","tag-dunlin","tag-gadwall","tag-golden-plover","tag-great-black-backed-gull","tag-grey-heron","tag-greylag-goose","tag-herring-gull","tag-knot","tag-lapwing","tag-linnet","tag-little-ringed-plover","tag-mallard","tag-marsh-harrier","tag-reed-bunting","tag-ruff","tag-sandwich-tern","tag-shoveler","tag-silver-y","tag-sparrowhawk","tag-starling","tag-stonechat","tag-summer-triangle","tag-teal","tag-vega"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4966","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=4966"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4966\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4969,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4966\/revisions\/4969"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4966"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4966"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4966"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}