Ophelia please darken my door

Well the old neighbourhood just ain't the same. Look at this - this was taken out of my office window at about 4pm, but it appeared to be verging on dusk such was the effect of the dusty and smoky atmosphere brought northwards by Ophelia. It started early afternoon when things began to appear a little hazy outside. I went to a meeting where I couldn't really just stare out of the window and when I came back it was verging on apocalyptic. Very strange indeed and I'm a bit miffed that I didn't have a real camera with me that would have interpreted it rather more accurately than my phone which was doing its best to turn the scene into a sunny Samsung day! I think I managed to get vaguely get it to stop mucking about with it, but all I can say is that it if wasn't like the below then it was damn close. Everything was yellow, a dull sepia, as if somebody had stretched a pair of tights over the sun. The effect was quite amazing actually, one of those events that we may not witness again. An hour later it had cleared up considerably, the band of polluted air taken further north, but I imagine that there will be all sorts of amazing photos from up and down the country that emerge in the coming days.

The funny thing is that Canary Wharf didn't really appear any more windy than normal, and sitting here typing this at home it seems to be pretty calm outside. As a patch worker this is a bit of a shame, as I was hoping for the Bald Ibis/Gannet double tomorrow morning. On that subject, the patch was not on fire this morning in the same way as yesterday. From dawn to around 8.15 there were quite a lots of Wood Pigeons, up to c80 Redwings and four late Swallow, but the big numbers of finches just weren't there. Nor sadly the Woodlarks. Still, I am up to 107 for the year, which is already better than 2016 by one, and there is still quite a lot of time left in which to add to it. Woodcock is probably the only regular bird missing, and Bullfinch if I'm lucky, anything else will have to come with a fair slice of jam I suspect. Speaking of which, Hawfinch would be just fine.