Big Waters and Howdon

Yet another belated blog from last weekend so just a few notes from our regular Sunday walk around Big Waters.  For part of the walk all 6 members of the team were present which is an unusual occurrence nowadays but makes for good banter.   A few things seen including the return of a pair of Great Crested Grebe which had been on the pond for a few days although could only get my eyes on one of them.  A Pintail was also present and a Shoveller, all of which were monthly ticks.  Plenty of LBJs over the farmers fields feeding well but just couldn't get close enough to them to check them out plus it was probably the dullest day on record for quite a while.  That's enough writing so here are a couple of pictures from the day

A lone Cormorant drying itself off after fishing for

some considerable time

Autumn is definitely here

Where's Alan, there isn't much food on here for us hungry Pheasants

As stated above plenty of Little Brown Jobs around

Then the arrival of the Greylags is always an impressive site to watch

Finally from Big Waters this Migrant Hawker was sunning itself when the sun did 

manage to show itself for a few minutes

On Friday night I popped down to Howdon Wetlands where I spent a pleasant 90 mins watching Teal, Redshank, Mallards and in particular about 100 Curlews coming into roost in groups of a dozen or so all of which did a few laps of the wetlands before all landing in the same place.