Don’t Rely on the Weather Forecast

For some birding today I quite fancied trying for the Penduline Tits at WSM, the Baikal Teal at Greylake finishing up with my third attempt on the Snow Bunting at Mere. In the end though I decided to stay local as I have quite a lot of work to do in the garden. The Water Park was my final choice and having seen on the weather forecast that there was going to be fog from the early hours until nine I planned to leave home at around eight. Typically I woke at four and again at six and at both times there was no fog. Anyway I arrived at the Water Park at about twenty past eight and parked along the Spine Road to walk around lakes 28, 29 and thirty. It was -3 and 28 was completely frozen, it’s neighbour, 29 had no ice at all and was the lake of choice for Mallard with at least a hundred and fifty counted. I then set myself up to scan lake 30. I had been there about five minutes when a bank of fog rolled across the water which left me peering into a sea of grey. So it was back to the car and on driving north I found that Kent End and Cleveland lakes were still clear. Kent End had around a hundred and twenty Lapwing and a good number of ducks. I then tried 68 which was pretty quiet but did have four Goldeneye and a flyby Marsh Harrier. On 82 were over a hundred Red Crested Pochard and Tufted Duck. I then moved onto Twitchers but unfortunately the fog had caught me up. With very little visibility here I decided to give the lakes to the north of the A419 a go but the fog had reached these as well. So I decided to give up and go home, obviously halfway back the fog cleared and I arrived home in sunshine. The only consolation being I got plenty of time in the garden.