{"id":664,"date":"2010-08-25T10:35:12","date_gmt":"2010-08-25T10:35:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/?p=664"},"modified":"2010-08-25T10:35:12","modified_gmt":"2010-08-25T10:35:12","slug":"british-birdwatching-fair-2010","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/birdwatching\/british-birdwatching-fair-2010","title":{"rendered":"British Birdwatching Fair 2010"},"content":{"rendered":"

We’ve been away for a few days, as part of the Birdwatching Northumberland consortium at the British Birdwatching Fair 2010<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Thursday started very early for Martin, with a North Pennines Prestige Tour for clients who were staying at Wallfoot <\/a>in Carlisle.\u00a0 Managing to avoid the worst of the weather, avian highlights included Merlin, Goldcrest, Nuthatch, Red Grouse, Black Grouse, Whinchat<\/em><\/strong> and Wheatear<\/em><\/strong>.\u00a0 The long drive down the M6 didn’t, unfortunately, miss the heavy rain.\u00a0 However,\u00a0a late arrival at the White Lion in Whissendine, and a few beers in the bar with such luminaries as Ipin<\/a>\u00a0set Martin up nicely for an early start on Friday.<\/p>\n

Sarah was at work (in her ‘proper’ job) so, apart from attending a couple of lectures, Martin was on the Birdwatching Northumberland stand for\u00a0all of the first day.<\/p>\n

Saturday we planned to work ‘split’ shifts, but with Martin again spending most of his time on the stand; apart from another couple of lectures and one or two chats with clients, colleagues, suppliers, competitors and collaborators (both old and new).<\/p>\n

Another excellent curry at the White Lion, and a ‘few’ beers, on Sataurday night was followed by the dawning of the final day of Bird Fair 2010.\u00a0 One of us was a bit ‘under the weather’ but perked up in time to give his talk ‘The North Sea – a new birding frontier’ at 3.30pm.\u00a0 What could have been a bit of a graveyard shift managed to generate a lot of interest, with 134 bird fair attendees\u00a0making their way to\u00a0the lecture marquee to enjoy a brief history of the Northumberland pelagics<\/a>.\u00a0 There were a few questions at the end of the lecture, then Martin was stopped and asked some more, for the next 10 minutes, as he headed back to the stand – where other people who had been in the lecture were waiting to ask more questions.<\/p>\n

After three days at the Bird Fair we’d made a lot of new contacts, renewed some old acquaintances and we’ll shortly be entering exciting partnerships with some big names in the birding world.\u00a0 Just a few very busy weeks to come first…<\/p>\n

A final night in the midlands was followed by the journey north on Monday, and then a Prestige Tour yesterday.\u00a0 Beginning with\u00a0 an actively feeding Dipper<\/em><\/strong> was a good start then,\u00a0with a particular request for wading birds, it was good to strike a rich vein on the coast;\u00a0Green and Common Sandpipers, Greenshank, Redshank, Spotted Redshank, Curlew, Whimbrel, Oystercatcher, Lapwing, Dunlin<\/em><\/strong> and Ruff<\/em><\/strong>.\u00a0 What seemed to go down better than all of the other birds though were the always impressive Grey Herons<\/em><\/strong>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We’ve been away for a few days, as part of the Birdwatching Northumberland consortium at the British Birdwatching Fair 2010. Thursday started very early for Martin, with a North Pennines Prestige Tour for clients who were staying at Wallfoot in Carlisle.\u00a0 Managing to avoid the worst of the weather, avian highlights included Merlin, Goldcrest, Nuthatch, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,107,12,105,5,141],"tags":[52,54,49,214,172,257,288,135,333,332,283,123,56,356,300,210,208,358,241,357,231,262],"class_list":["post-664","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-birdwatching","category-family-and-friends","category-pennines","category-north-sea","category-northumberland","category-northumberland-coast","tag-birdwatching-northumberland","tag-black-grouse","tag-british-birdwatching-fair","tag-common-sandpiper","tag-curlew","tag-dipper","tag-dunlin","tag-goldcrest","tag-green-sandpiper","tag-greenshank","tag-grey-heron","tag-lapwing","tag-merlin","tag-northumberland-pelagics","tag-nuthatch","tag-oystercatcher","tag-red-grouse","tag-redshank","tag-ruff","tag-spotted-redshank","tag-whimbrel","tag-whinchat"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/664","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\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=664"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/664\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":665,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/664\/revisions\/665"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=664"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=664"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=664"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}