Bank Vole

After waiting for the fog to clear this morning we headed over to Pickering's Pasture as we've not been there for a few weeks and there is normally a good chance of seeing winter thrushes. 
It's only a 10-15 minute drive, but by the time we got there it was all foggy again! The sun looked like it was going to poke through so we set out on our wander. 
As I was intending on photographing birds, all I took with me was my long lens as I'm too lazy to lug around lots of kit in a back pack, but I really could have done with a wide angle lens to capture the scene. We couldn't even see across the river, but gradually it began to lift a little (see extras), but not enough for us to see the bridges. It did actually look rather lovely without a breath of wind. 
Anyway, we arrived at the screen overlooking the pool and all it contained was one solitary sandpiper, which was a bit disappointing. 
We stood and watched the little birds on the feeders for a while before hubby spotted a tiny bank vole sneaking out to feed on the droppings of the finches - they're little messy birds. So that's todays blip. 
We didn't see many winter thrushes - one song thrush and a couple of blackbirds was about the size of it. No redwings or fieldfares.  However, we did hear the distant cronking of a pair of ravens which was a nice surprise, and we saw a buzzard and a kestrel having a little spat, but too far away for any decent shots. 
By the time we got back to the car, it was bathed in sunshine and the temperature was reading 18 degrees. A pleasant couple of hours.