{"id":550,"date":"2010-05-28T14:54:05","date_gmt":"2010-05-28T14:54:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/?p=550"},"modified":"2011-03-29T05:53:19","modified_gmt":"2011-03-29T05:53:19","slug":"early-to-rise","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/birdwatching\/early-to-rise","title":{"rendered":"Early to rise"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>4am, and the insistent ringing of\u00a0the alarm prises me out of bed.\u00a0 Stagger down the stairs, get dressed, find binoculars\/hat\/gloves and head out into the chill early morning Southeast Northumberland air.\u00a0 The Dawn Chorus is in full flow; <strong><em>Blackbirds<\/em><\/strong> are leading the way, and dominating the soundscape around our house, <strong><em>Chiffchaffs<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0are\u00a0singing from the churchyard and I\u00a0make a mental note\u00a0to do this again tomorrow to get some sound recordings.<\/p>\n<p>Walking along the River Wansbeck I can see a pointed snout sticking out of the water distantly.\u00a0 Closer inspection reveals a <strong><em>Grey Seal<\/em><\/strong>.\u00a0 A <strong><em>Grey Heron<\/em><\/strong> flies by, croaking and screeching as a pair of <strong><em>Carrion Crows<\/em><\/strong> harrass it until it turns through 180 and heads away from the annoyance.\u00a0 I move on as well, heading towards Druridge Bay.\u00a0 With ethereal mist rising from a coastal pool, <strong><em>Sedge Warblers<\/em><\/strong> are singing from the bushes around me, and I&#8217;m concentrating on the mimicry that they employ, when a group of\u00a0<strong><em>Rabbits<\/em><\/strong> suddenly scatter and <strong><em>Lapwings<\/em><\/strong>, <strong><em>Black-headed Gulls<\/em><\/strong> and\u00a0<strong><em>Common Terns<\/em><\/strong> begin circling and alarming.\u00a0 A movement in the grass reveals itself as a <strong><em>Red Fox<\/em><\/strong>; wary,\u00a0immaculate and healthy &#8211; this isn&#8217;t the urban scrounger so familiar to many people, but rather what a recent client described as &#8220;that&#8217;ll be one of\u00a0those rural foxes then&#8221;.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Then, one of those moments that take me back the best part of four decades; a <strong><em>Cuckoo<\/em><\/strong> starts calling.\u00a0 My first <strong><em>Cuckoo<\/em><\/strong>, all those years ago, was on an early morning birdwatching cycle ride to a site several miles from home.\u00a0 With nobody else anywhere to be seen, and all of the sounds of the early morning to myself, that haunting sound carried from nearby trees before the pointy-winged long-tailed shape of the bird raced across my field of view.\u00a0 I stand and marvel at the bird.\u00a0 It&#8217;s fascinating breeding ecology and migration still grip me the way that birdwatching did when I was a little lad.\u00a0 Perhaps I need to start setting the alarm for very early every morning \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>4am, and the insistent ringing of\u00a0the alarm prises me out of bed.\u00a0 Stagger down the stairs, get dressed, find binoculars\/hat\/gloves and head out into the chill early morning Southeast Northumberland air.\u00a0 The Dawn Chorus is in full flow; Blackbirds are leading the way, and dominating the soundscape around our house, Chiffchaffs\u00a0are\u00a0singing from the churchyard and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,9,5,139],"tags":[823,271,133,272,268,229,264,283,835,123,825,284,847,227],"class_list":["post-550","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-birdwatching","category-druridge","category-northumberland","category-southeast-northumberland","tag-birdwatching","tag-black-headed-gull","tag-blackbird","tag-carrion-crow","tag-chiffchaff","tag-common-tern","tag-cuckoo","tag-grey-heron","tag-grey-seal","tag-lapwing","tag-northumberland","tag-rabbit","tag-red-fox","tag-sedge-warbler"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/550","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=550"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/550\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":966,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/550\/revisions\/966"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=550"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=550"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=550"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}