A long overdue visit to Middleton Lakes

Yes, a long overdue visit to Middleton Lakes, the last time was the beginning of July!

With the unsettled weather (which currently seems still to be never ending), and various tasks to do, it hadn't been feasible to squeeze it on the diary....

Still, a good day on Thursday 16th September, sunny and cloudy, warm and a nice breeze keeping the temp to a steady 20ºC.

I was shocked at the silver birch trees already losing yellow leaves considering the showers we'd been having, while the rest of the trees seemed to be still green. Still, it provided a nice autumnal photo.

One of three great white egrets on the west scrape, the other two were obscured by geenery

A hungry grey heron

Did I say a hungry grey heron?

Make that a very hungry grey heron, it turned around and started to find another poor fishy for breakie....

A juvenile crow came to bathe, and was determined to taunt the lapwings, that were not impressed with the intrusion!

As the lapwings moved away, the juvenile crow moved with them, to continue the bathe

The lapwings weren't impressed and moved again...

Lapwing

A great crested grebe chilled (but not frozen...)...

Before it decided to have a bathe...

and came up all nicely groomed and fluffy!

Time for the GCG to reflect on things...

Whilst having my lunch, an orb spider made an appearance, then trundled off along the wire fence...

A first sighting for me, a hobby.

Sadly, it was a case of grab the camera, point and shoot, so not great photos....

A later photo suggests it has something in its talons....

Another first sighting for me, a little stint, again not a great quality photo, the distance was pushing things beyond reasonable limits.

On one of the culverts, a host of pond skaters were trying to move upstream!

With he warmth, sun and little wind, dragons, hawkers and damsels were out and about, and to end the day, walking along the hard core path, the damsels were out and about, getting the heat from the stones.

A small red damselfly

A common blue damselfly

The final one for the day, ident confirmations please, a sole youngster, no adults or siblings, a juvenile moorhen or coot, both of which frequent the area this was seen?