Raining at Ryan's field

By the time I got to Ryan's field this morning I was feeling a bit like a drowned rat but little did I know that I was about to photograph one,  Once in the shelter of the hide I settled down to watch the familiar sight of a Little Egret patrolling along the shoreline towards the hide as it fished,  On reaching the small pool in front of the hide it dashed across the muddy bank and attacked an out of sight brown rat in the hidden hedgerow,  Following some high pitched squealing the Egret reappeared in the water with the now very muddy rat firmly held in its peak and as you might see by the sequence of images below it just dropped the rat into the water and as soon as the rat moved the Egret grabbed it again and now it was clean!  A few short upward movements of its head and the Egret was able to swallow the rat the last of which can be seen as a bit of a lump in the Egrets throat and then it was gone,

I might have been feeling a bit like a drowned rat on my arrival but at least nothing had tried to eat me for dinner,  I decided to go home and get into some dry clothes well my luck held out !!