With a free afternoon my visit to Fly Flatts was soon dashed with dense fog throughout my area so it was head south with Copley in mind but the heavy mist still persisted so I finally ended up at Elland Gravel Pits, one of my old stomping grounds from years gone by.
The light down there was grim being just below the cloud base with light drizzle throughout.
A disappointing visit wildfowl wise with just 1 male Goosander on the river and a few Mallards on the canal otherwise nothing but small gulls and Cormorants on the fishermans ponds and ski lake.
A check on the weir just found more Mallards whilst 2 more Cormorants were overhead. Back on the canal banking several mixed flocks of Goldfinch, Redpoll and Siskin were mobile moving along the Alder trees along with 2 pair of Bullfinch.
Trying to take photos of the Siskin across the canal and deep in the Alders , not to mention the poor light, proved near impossible especially as it was like being stood on the M62 with bikes, joggers and off lead dogs pounding past constantly.
Hopefully this fog will be short lived then I can get back to where I belong, the uplands.
Just to end on a light note, many years ago at Elland Gravel Pits where I used to meet lifelong birder Gordon Denison , he was walking along the tow path and never heard a bike approaching him from behind whilst busy watching the Alder trees as I was today. As the bike started to pass him Dennis stopped and took a step sideways to look through his bins. The lad tried to avoid him and bike and rider ended up in the canal. Dennis looked back at the bedraggled biker up to his waist in water and still holding onto his bike ,and said, in his usual dry sort of way, " Whats tha doing in theer lad ". The bikers reply unfortunately cannot be published on a public blog.
BS