Autumn in the fens

Chris and I spent a couple of hours at Deeping Lakes NR this afternoon. Unfortunately the glorious winter sunshine of the morning fizzled out just as we arrived, and by three o'clock we were struggling to photograph anything under a pall of low cloud.

We'd gone in search of long-eared owls - we spotted one in a distant tree, but it was too far away for me to photograph. Luckily there were plenty of other  diversions, including cormorants roosting in a russet-leaved oak (see extra), goldeneye and goosander (also distant), vivid yellow willows, crimson hawthorn berries and bizarrely shaped pollard willows, that surely belonged in a fairy story (see extra). 

Although, at first glance everything seemed quite subdued, it was surprising how much colour there still was in the autumn foliage.