{"id":623,"date":"2010-07-19T12:15:56","date_gmt":"2010-07-19T12:15:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/?p=623"},"modified":"2011-07-10T09:56:11","modified_gmt":"2011-07-10T09:56:11","slug":"birdwatching-more-than-just-a-hobby","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/birdwatching\/birdwatching-more-than-just-a-hobby","title":{"rendered":"Birdwatching; more than just a Hobby"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Our two Druridge Bay mini-safaris last Wednesday both featured one of my favourite birds; <strong><em>Black-tailed Godwit<\/em><\/strong>.\u00a0 A group of eight flying N at dusk in torrential rain may have included the five that we saw at lunchtime.\u00a0 With plenty of <strong><em>Curlew, Lapwing <\/em><\/strong>and <strong><em>Dunlin<\/em><\/strong>, as well as a few <strong><em>Ruff <\/em><\/strong>and <strong><em>Common Sandpipers<\/em><\/strong> there was a &#8216;busy&#8217; feel to birdwatching the coastal pools.\u00a0 <strong><em>Common Frog<\/em><\/strong> and <strong><em>Common Toad<\/em><\/strong> were perhaps to be expected in the damp conditions.<\/p>\n<p>Thursday featured more torrential rain, although all of it whilst we were travelling between sites in Druridge Bay.\u00a0 After collecting two clients individually from Alnmouth we headed south.\u00a0 Dave had a day to remember with no less than five &#8216;lifers&#8217;; <strong><em>Little Owl, Dipper, Hobby, Scaup and\u00a0Arctic Tern<\/em><\/strong>.\u00a0 The <strong><em>Hobby <\/em><\/strong>was one of those classic moments.\u00a0 I was watching a group of <strong><em>Sand Martins<\/em><\/strong> when they all suddenly rose high above the water.\u00a0 As I opened my mouth to suggest that there was a raptor about, Dave said &#8220;What&#8217;s this?&#8221;&#8230;and there it was, a first-summer <strong><em>Hobby<\/em><\/strong>, heading straight towards us low over the pool.\u00a0 A <strong><em>Whimbrel<\/em><\/strong> flew by, giving it&#8217;s distinctive call, and the transition from the occasionally difficult birding of mid-summer to the more productive time of mid-July is well underway.<\/p>\n<p>Saturday was spent covering another three tetrads for the Bird Atlas and then on Sunday we had a few hours in our study area, searching for any sign of <strong><em>Hobby<\/em><\/strong> or <strong><em>Honey Buzzard<\/em><\/strong>.\u00a0 With heavy overcast conditions, occasional light rain,\u00a0and a cold breeze very few raptors were in evidence; just a <strong><em>Common Kestrel<\/em><\/strong> and a <strong><em>Common Buzzard<\/em><\/strong> to show for our efforts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Our two Druridge Bay mini-safaris last Wednesday both featured one of my favourite birds; Black-tailed Godwit.\u00a0 A group of eight flying N at dusk in torrential rain may have included the five that we saw at lunchtime.\u00a0 With plenty of Curlew, Lapwing and Dunlin, as well as a few Ruff and Common Sandpipers there was [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,9,104],"tags":[230,242,148,319,320,214,62,172,257,288,294,317,123,72,241,218,318,125,231],"class_list":["post-623","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-birdwatching","category-druridge","category-surveys","tag-arctic-tern","tag-black-tailed-godwit","tag-common-buzzard","tag-common-frog","tag-common-kestrel","tag-common-sandpiper","tag-common-toad","tag-curlew","tag-dipper","tag-dunlin","tag-hobby","tag-honey-buzzard","tag-lapwing","tag-little-owl","tag-ruff","tag-sand-martin","tag-scaup","tag-tree-sparrow","tag-whimbrel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/623","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=623"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/623\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1134,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/623\/revisions\/1134"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=623"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=623"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=623"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}