Goose Pond.....

It was a cold and dreary day and rained the whole time we were there, but we had to make a trip to the Goose Pond area last week, so we stopped to see what might be there.

Mostly we saw Coots....lots of Coots!  The water was very high on both sides of the road that runs through the middle of the place and one side had a lot of Coots and a fair amount of ducks....who flew away as soon as they saw our car stop.  We saw the ducks again later at a great distance circling a watery area.  Several hundred, but too far to even tell what type.

I would like to have gotten out of the car, but between the rain and no good place to pull off the rather busy road, I just did what I could through the open window of the car.

I'm including a few of these to just give the feel for the area......marsh with fairly high water at the moment.

A pair of Mallards stayed with the Coots for a few shots.

"I don't seem to belong in this group."

Over the grassy fields we had a great day for seeing Harriers, but not much in the way of photos.  There were at least 6 of them scouring this one field!  I have never seen that many together before.  They seemed to be in pairs and it was a large field.  We kept trying to drive along side and stop long enough for some photos, but never got any good ones.

They fly really low over the grass looking for prey.

It was great to know there were so many in the area!

On another small pond we saw a group of 5 Shovelers who were really busy "shoveling" and seldom brought their heads up out of the water.

Caught one here with its head out....finally.

We also saw a couple of deer.....one was running at full speed across one of the shallow marshes.  I tried to get photos, but it was very far away and raining quite a bit at that point.  I could follow the white tail flipping up and down :-)  The other deer seemed to be waiting on the far side.

So much for Goose Pond.  It's a great place, but not much fun in the rain and gloom (at least not with a camera in hand).