Brown and Mild

After a couple of days when winter threatened to take hold, things have returned back to the mild conditions that have dominated this winter so far. There was a strange brown hue to the area this morning, the rivers Lea and Thames and the dock basin water were all a muddy brown and of course there was the mud itself. The leaves have finally left the trees leaving just brown vegetation, the reeds and most of the birds seen this morning were brown.
There was about 320 teal in the area with 250 on the basin. Redshank numbers have decreased to just 13 in the Bow Creek roost. The Pintail (a brown female) was in its usual area on Bow Creek, but the Little Grebe seems to have vanished. There was very good flock of about 50 Linnets around Orchard Wharf and few other finches.