East India Dock Basin looking west, 20:11:2011
Common Sandpiper and Common Gull at Bow Creek, 20:11:2011
Greylag Goose at East India Dock Basin, 20:11:2011
Blackbird at Bow Creek Ecology Park, 20:11:2011
The first visit to the patch in over two weeks and the unseasonable weather of recent days has been replaced by an all-enveloping freezing fog which has reduced visibility down to around 20 metres. The Sun almost managed to burn it off around midday, but it is too far south to have had much of an effect and the fog soon returned. River watching was a non-starter, the Millennium Dome, less than 200 metres across the Thames was completely invisible and the few gulls that were around were reduced to ghostly shadows; likewise the basin was completely enshrouded, I managed to count around 130 Common Teal there but the number could have been higher as the reed fringed north shore was not visible, another 30 or so were on Bow Creek and their whistling contact calls were never out of earshot, as if to reassure each other that there were others of their kind nearby even if they could not be seen; the only other wildfowl of note was a single Greylag Goose which sailed out of the gloom at the basin. At least four Redshank were at Bow Creek, they seemed not not like this weather, flushing noisily at the slightest provocation; a single Common Sandpiper was also there but was reluctant to fly giving me the opportunity to take the photograph above. Two vocal Chiffchaffs were in the ecology park, both looked like and sounded like normal collybita to me, two Grey Wagtails were also around the ecology park and a single female chaffinch was in the northern scrub at the basin.
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