Amwell on Saturday

Colin was thinking of a trip to Kent over the weekend, but I was still feeling a bit under the weather so I decided to go down to the Lea Valley on Saturday morning and see how I felt afterwards.
My initial plan was to go to Cheshunt and see if the Smew was still on Bowyers Water and then walk up to the northern pits for the Goosanders. However, if we were going to Kent there was a fair chance of seeing both at Dungeness so I went to Amwell instead.
It was a bit of a let down when I got there just before 9am. It was cold, overcast and there didn't seem to be much about. A scan of Hardmead Lake from the viewpoint produced two Egyptian Geese, a few Mallard and Gadwall, lots of Coot, a couple of Lapwing, one or two Black-headed Gulls, more Coot and a few miscellaneous geese.
After about 15 minutes I headed down to Hollycross on the nice new gravel track (the work has pretty much finished and they have done a decent job cleaning up afterwards). I hardly found a bird-a few Blackbirds, one Mistle Thrush and a party of Long Tailed Tits. The feeders had a couple of Great Tits and Chaffinches with a fly by Great Spotted Woodpecker.
Thinking I had made a big mistake coming here, I slowly headed off back to the car, with the intention of going to Rye Meads but bumped into William at the Bittern Pool . He wasn't impressed with the lack of birds either. We went up to the viewpoint and found Bill and Phil along with a lot more birds. Something like 40 Wigeon had arrived, Great Crested Grebes had appeared, along with one or two Goldeneye, and there were more gulls as well. Despite the conditions, there were at least seven Buzzard and two Kites, plus some thrushes over the woods.
We went back to Hollycross. No Bittern on the pool, and still no passerines along the track. However we heard some Ring Necked Parakeets and two Redpolls were found were seen on Alders by the cottage. We also heard Siskin, and found a few thrushes. Pretty hard going though and we had to really work to find many of the birds, but in the end a day list of 50 isn't too bad.
Unfortunately I was frozen and didn't really warm up over the rest of the day, and felt really rough in the evening,  so I didn't think it would be a good idea to do Kent on Sunday. To make matters worse, the Crossbills were seen again at Broxbourne.