Driving down to Watton at Stone, the Sun started to break through- a good sign which was unfortunately dashed when I crossed the Lea on the A10 and visibility dropped considerably. Amazed at the number of dick heads who think that silver cars in fog don't need any lights on but there you go, maybe they will learn the hard way.
John Bartlett arrived at the same time so we wandered up to the view point, happily visibility was good enough to see the entire lake. Water levels have crept up a bit since I was last here though it appeared that everything else was pretty much the same. It would have been nice if the Great White Egret seen yesterday heading to the Netherhall roost and flying north over Rye Meads at 7 am this morning had actually made it to Amwell but all the egrets were Little.
There were a decent number of large gulls at the southern end so I headed off down there joining John and Trevor in the hide. I reasonable Caspian candidate-2W was picked up but too far for my bins, unfortunately it failed all the tests in Trevor's scope, and a later attempt at a maybe Yellow Legged failed as well-it was white headed and the mantle colour was identical to a nearby Common Gull so it was worth a punt.
Eventually I made my way down to Hollycross, picking up a small flock of Redwings, one or more calling Bullfinch and a Marsh Tit by the bridges. There seemed to be a huge number of Long Tailed Tits and Goldcrests along this stretch. The feeders were as popular as last year, producing good numbers of Chaffinch and Goldfinch, several Pheasants at least one marsh Tit and one or two Coal Tits.
I made my way back to the view point through the woods picking up even more crests, but a search of the alders failed to pick up any Siskin in the Goldfinch flocks. A Treecreeper would have been nice too.
Autumn colour is still pretty good but there seems dot be a distinct lack of fungi on my circuit.
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