Big Waters Just Before the Big Hurricane (that sort of fizzled out over here - well I didn't see much from the Office)

Sunday I did a quick trip to Howdon Wetlands but it was low water so there was not a great lot present  so shot off up to Big Waters to meet the walkers and we walked all the way to the hide as the rain was coming down.  There was a lot of movement on the pond with the rain, wind and an Otter keeping things moving around.  Here are some of the shots I managed.

Great welcoming shot at 9.30am 

Goldeneye, the first one since March

A Black-tailed Godwit dropped in for a few minutes 

 

A slightly better shot of a Shoveller than the ones I have been getting the last few weeks

Big Waters is always a great place for Woodpecker sightings

A youngish looking Grey Wagtail graced the scrape for a few minutes

 

This is the regular "Big Waters Coot Oaks", very much like the the Epsom one but about a mile shorter.  We have no starting problems here though as our regular starter, Mr O Lutrinae, can guarantee to get them moving at the first twitch of a whisker.

Searching for a scrap on the scrape

Now, for some reason I forgot to do a blog from Big Waters the previous week so here are a couple of more pictures for you lucky people

A Sparrowhawk causing chaos at the North and West end of the reserve 

Another Hawk over the reserve

It was closely followed by a Hercules

If you look closely you can see the Sparrowhawk that was terrorising the North scrape just over a week ago (think its the same one above) and could have been the one that dispatched the Grey Phalarope  (a nice pic of the Phalarope can be seen at Phil H's Blog here)

We stood looking at each other about 75m apart for a couple of minutes

 Another couple grazing on the North Scrape for over 30minutes

The end of another week, thats another week towards retirement CAN'T WAIT