Even though we live in southeast Northumberland, we’ll never tire of getting out and about searching for new experiences for our clients.\u00a0 Days out with clients are always exciting as well, because we never know exactly what we’ll see or what it will be doing.<\/p>\n
Last Thursday we had a Southeast Northumberland\/Druridge Bay safari with clients from a fairly wide geographical area; Jeff and Jean from Huddersfield, Lawrie and Linda from Glasgow and Yvonne from southwest Northumberland.\u00a0 Starting at Newbiggin we managed a brief view of a Mediterranean Gull<\/em><\/strong> on the beach, and a small flock of Sanderling<\/em><\/strong>.\u00a0 These little grey, white and black ‘clockwork toys’ are always entertaining as they scurry back and forth along the water’s edge.\u00a0 The River Wansbeck was our next destination.\u00a0 As expected there was a good sized flock of Lapwing<\/em><\/strong> roosting and\u00a0Cormorants<\/em><\/strong> and Herons<\/em><\/strong> were doing what they do; standing with their wings out and just sort of standing respectively.\u00a0 All of a sudden a wave of panic spread through the Lapwings<\/em><\/strong>.\u00a0 We all scanned backwards, forwards, skywards but couldn’t see any cause.\u00a0 Perhaps it was just a false alarm? \u00a0The birds settled but were up again within a minute, gradually settling back down with a great deal of conversation between them all.\u00a0 Greenshanks<\/em><\/strong> flew by calling and the Lapwings<\/em><\/strong> were becoming increasingly jittery.\u00a0 Even birds from distant streams were high in the air, forming the quite tight flocks that indicate the presence of a predator, something that creates anticipation wherever we’re birdwatching.\u00a0 Eventually we found a distant Peregrine<\/em><\/strong>, and a big female Sparrowhawk<\/em><\/strong> slid menacingly through the trees opposite our watchpoint.\u00a0 One or both of them was presumably the cause for concern.\u00a0 Even the Great Black-backed Gulls<\/em><\/strong> flushed and flew overhead, giving calls of consternation.<\/p>\n Among the coastal waders, perhaps the best were three Common Snipe<\/em><\/strong>, unusually confiding and just a few metres away from us.\u00a0 The fall of passerine migrants earlier in the week had left a few goodies behind.\u00a0 Spotted<\/em><\/strong> and Pied Flycatchers<\/em><\/strong> were quite elusive, sallying forth and then back into cover, Willow Warblers<\/em><\/strong> and Chiffchaffs<\/em><\/strong> were picking their way through willows beside the path and, providing a visual feast to rival the gaudiest of birds from elsewhere in the world, six male Common Redstarts<\/em><\/strong> were along one short stretch of hedge.\u00a0 There really is little to rival the beauty of these birds.<\/p>\n At the conclusion of our journey up the coast a bird as lacking in colour as the Redstart<\/em><\/strong> is bathed in it was a final\u00a0wonderful sighting.\u00a0 As we watched two Grey Herons<\/em><\/strong> perched in trees overhanging the River Coquet, a Little Egret<\/em><\/strong> flew by before returning and perching high in the treetops in a spot where we could watch it through the ‘scope.\u00a0 There\u00a0can’t be many better\u00a0places to be birdwatching than the\u00a0Northumberland coast in September \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Even though we live in southeast Northumberland, we’ll never tire of getting out and about searching for new experiences for our clients.\u00a0 Days out with clients are always exciting as well, because we never know exactly what we’ll see or what it will be doing. Last Thursday we had a Southeast Northumberland\/Druridge Bay safari with […]<\/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":[823,268,374,373,372,375,332,283,123,243,193,825,55,80,131,285,213],"class_list":["post-683","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-birdwatching","category-druridge","category-northumberland","category-southeast-northumberland","tag-birdwatching","tag-chiffchaff","tag-common-redstart","tag-common-snipe","tag-cormorant","tag-great-black-backed-gull","tag-greenshank","tag-grey-heron","tag-lapwing","tag-little-egret","tag-mediterranean-gull","tag-northumberland","tag-peregrine","tag-sanderling","tag-sparrowhawk","tag-spotted-flycatcher","tag-willow-warbler"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/683","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=683"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/683\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":687,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/683\/revisions\/687"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=683"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=683"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=683"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}