{"id":5086,"date":"2021-07-05T13:05:17","date_gmt":"2021-07-05T12:05:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/?p=5086"},"modified":"2021-07-05T13:05:18","modified_gmt":"2021-07-05T12:05:18","slug":"back-on-track-and-tracking-the-storm-druridge-bay-mini-safari-04-07-21","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/northumberland\/druridge\/back-on-track-and-tracking-the-storm-druridge-bay-mini-safari-04-07-21","title":{"rendered":"Back on track and tracking the storm; Druridge Bay mini-Safari 04\/07\/21"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

With so many postponed trips last year, it’s been great to get out again and start meeting clients who we’ve been chatting to via email for a long time \ud83d\ude42 I arrived in Druridge Bay<\/a> and met up with Phil, then Melanie, then Marjorie and Ollie for an evening searching for otters<\/em><\/strong> and other wildlife. The weather forecast was promising us heavy showers and the potential for thunderstorms, so I suggested our best option was to stay very local and try to avoid getting too wet…<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are two schools of thought about wildlife watching: stay put, immerse yourself, take in whatever’s in front of you, or roam and search. I frequently use both when I’m out and about on my own but with clients we usually move between sites so the stay put approach seemed to be a gamble \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That gamble produced what must be one of our best mini-Safaris over the last 13 years…tiny avocet<\/em><\/strong> chicks, defended against ‘encroaching’ coots, moorhens<\/em><\/strong>, and lapwings<\/em><\/strong> by a furious adult, contrasted with another one of this year’s young that was close to adult size, alongside a wader line-up that also included common snipe, common redshank, ruff, black-tailed godwit, oystercatcher, dunlin, ringed plover<\/em><\/strong>, and curlew<\/em><\/strong> arriving to roost with their eerie cries cutting through the ethereal mist rising from the marsh as the first heavy shower approached. A grey heron<\/em><\/strong> was stalking through the rushes as teal, mallard, gadwall<\/em><\/strong> and shoveler<\/em><\/strong> dabbled in shallow water, Canada<\/em><\/strong> and greylag geese<\/em><\/strong> grazed beside pied<\/em><\/strong> and yellow wagtails<\/em><\/strong> foraging through the lush vegetation and the songs and calls of meadow pipit, common whitethroat, willow warbler<\/em><\/strong>, grasshopper warbler, chiffchaff<\/em><\/strong> and reed bunting<\/em><\/strong> filled the air as a noisy flock of common terns<\/em><\/strong> arrived. The crazy, leggy joie de vivre of roe deer<\/em><\/strong> triplets attracted the attention of Exmoor ponies<\/em><\/strong>, brown hares<\/em><\/strong> loped through recently harvested fields and then, as mute swans, tufted ducks<\/em><\/strong> and mallards<\/em><\/strong> all started to look concerned, Marjorie spotted the tell-tale ring of bright water as an otter<\/em><\/strong> surfaced nearby before slinking off just ahead of a torrential downpour that cleared to make way for a swarm of swifts, sand martins, house martins<\/em><\/strong> and swallows<\/em><\/strong> gorging themselves on newly emerged insects against the backdrop of a stormy sunset.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

With so many postponed trips last year, it’s been great to get out again and start meeting clients who we’ve been chatting to via email for a long time \ud83d\ude42 I arrived in Druridge Bay and met up with Phil, then Melanie, then Marjorie and Ollie for an evening searching for otters and other wildlife. […]<\/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":[40,242,57,268,556,373,763,229,593,270,172,288,170,283,232,123,360,171,207,198,178,837,536,127,224,66,241,218,269,398,217,169,182,213,552],"class_list":["post-5086","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-druridge","tag-avocet","tag-black-tailed-godwit","tag-brown-hare","tag-chiffchaff","tag-common-redshank","tag-common-snipe","tag-common-swift","tag-common-tern","tag-common-whitethroat","tag-coot","tag-curlew","tag-dunlin","tag-gadwall","tag-grey-heron","tag-house-martin","tag-lapwing","tag-little-grebe","tag-mallard","tag-meadow-pipit","tag-moorhen","tag-mute-swan","tag-otter","tag-pied-wagtail","tag-reed-bunting","tag-ringed-plover","tag-roe-deer","tag-ruff","tag-sand-martin","tag-shoveler","tag-spoonbill","tag-swallow","tag-teal","tag-tufted-duck","tag-willow-warbler","tag-yellow-wagtail"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5086","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=5086"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5086\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5087,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5086\/revisions\/5087"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5086"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5086"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5086"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}