{"id":992,"date":"2011-04-16T14:58:52","date_gmt":"2011-04-16T14:58:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/?p=992"},"modified":"2011-04-16T14:58:52","modified_gmt":"2011-04-16T14:58:52","slug":"happiness-is-a-state-of-find","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/birdwatching\/happiness-is-a-state-of-find","title":{"rendered":"Happiness is a state of ‘find’"},"content":{"rendered":"

A couple of months after I left my teaching career, I was sent a link to this webpage<\/a>… and\u00a0I\u00a0ended up\u00a0in a pub at 10:00 on a Tuesday morning, explaining\u00a0my ideas to an interview panel.<\/p>\n

A few weeks after that interview I\u00a0found myself\u00a0on an Enterprise Island<\/a> residential weekend and when we were asked the question “how will you know when your business is a success?”\u00a0 almost everyone answered that the measure of that would be if their customers were happy.<\/p>\n

We had our first Cheviots <\/a>Safari of the year yesterday.\u00a0 I collected Sally and Tony from Morpeth and we headed northwest.\u00a0 On a day that was cold, windy and\u00a0overcast, the quality of the birdwatching in the Northumberland hills more than made up for the weather;\u00a03 Ring Ouzels<\/em><\/strong> perched obligingly in one tree, allowing us a prolonged opportunity to watch them, Curlews <\/strong><\/em>were displaying high over the heather moorland, male\u00a0Red Grouse<\/strong><\/em> were as stunning as ever, Chaffinches<\/strong><\/em>, Willow Warblers<\/strong><\/em>, Chiffchaffs<\/strong><\/em>, Blackcaps<\/strong><\/em>, Robins<\/strong><\/em>, Redpolls<\/strong><\/em>, Meadow Pipits<\/strong><\/em>, Mistle Thrushes<\/strong><\/em>\u00a0and Wrens <\/strong><\/em>were all singing and we had an unexpected bonus in the shape of a White Wagtail<\/em><\/strong>.\u00a0 A real highlight of the day, although it wasn’t a highlight so much as a constant backdrop, was the number of raptors; 14 Common Buzzards<\/em><\/strong> (including 7 in the air at the same time), 2 Kestrels<\/em><\/strong> chasing each other around and a Sparrowhawk<\/em><\/strong> would have been a good haul on a cold day, but as we watched a Peregrine <\/strong><\/em>go into a stooping dive we were amazed to see that the object of it’s ire was a Goshawk<\/em><\/strong>, beating it’s way steadily across the hillside.\u00a0 As the falcon repeatedly buzzed the ‘phantom of the forest’, buzzards were hanging in the wind high above it, and a kestrel was hovering against the hilltop.\u00a0 It was one of those moments that I really can’t do justice to in writing.<\/p>\n

And the connection to the anecdote at the start of this post?\u00a0 My answer to the question was that I would consider NEWT a success if I was happy with what we’re doing.\u00a0 Of course, me being happy requires happy clients…\u00a0and the reason we had Sally and Tony out with us yesterday was that Sally had been given a gift voucher by one of our previous clients.\u00a0 Happiness is infectious \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A couple of months after I left my teaching career, I was sent a link to this webpage… and\u00a0I\u00a0ended up\u00a0in a pub at 10:00 on a Tuesday morning, explaining\u00a0my ideas to an interview panel. A few weeks after that interview I\u00a0found myself\u00a0on an Enterprise Island residential weekend and when we were asked the question “how […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,8,5],"tags":[461,268,148,172,164,128,55,208,263,131,244,213],"class_list":["post-992","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-birdwatching","category-cheviot-valleys","category-northumberland","tag-blackcap","tag-chiffchaff","tag-common-buzzard","tag-curlew","tag-goshawk","tag-kestrel","tag-peregrine","tag-red-grouse","tag-ring-ouzel","tag-sparrowhawk","tag-white-wagtail","tag-willow-warbler"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/992","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=992"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/992\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":993,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/992\/revisions\/993"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=992"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=992"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northernexperiencewildlifetours.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=992"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}