Öreg-tó, Tata - foggy morning

I have had some very bad luck with terrible or at least unpleasant weather conditions disabling birding on the available time. I finally gave up looking through the window in every morning and picked up my children to see some nice birds nearby my home at the Öreg-tó (local name) or for foreigners better known as Old Lake. For sure the weather was again too misty to be able to pick up anything from the crowd of wildgeese. The lake can be reached within some hundred meters from my house which is almost entirely surrounded by the town. It is a very important wintering site for wildfowl including thousands of goose and duck and gull species. This is a Ramsar Site together with the Ferencmajor fishponds and other in-between areas. The range of vision was limited but at least I could see some species on the ground and the water. There was about 22.000 geese with about equal share between Greater White-fronted Goose and the Taiga Bean Goose. While scanning the geese under a very bad light conditions I finally spotted 2 Red-breasted Goose. Two days before a Brant, a Barnacle and 7 Red-breasted Geese was seen by my friend. After leaving the lake we made a short trip to the Gerecse Mountains where we mainly enjoyed the scenic views with very nicely colored forests. The rusty dead leaves on the ground made the already grey forest beautiful. Almost no birds have been seen during the trip. Finally we found a nice flock of Fieldfares together with some other species feeding and bathing on the main road. Yellowhammers, Linnets and Eurasian Tree-Sparrows were also seen. Surprisingly still about 20 European Starlings was among them. The best species was a Redwing in this flock.