My favorite shots from December all came about in very similar situations - while walking around in the fog looking for landscape shots. Sadly, none of these shots are landscape shots. But the birds and animals were out on these warm, misty mornings and I shot them.
The squirrel was just out and about collecting nuts, but when he stepped into a natural frame, it was too good to pass up. I had stalked a Yellow-Bellied Sapsucker for about a half hour one weekend and never got a good shot, but then one foggy morning, in the middle of the woods, a pair wandered low to the ground just a few feet from me.
And, there's always plenty of Downy Woodpeckers about. This one ignored me though, and let me get close.
The only thing interesting was that my ISO was very high on each shot (3200-6400).  Over the past year I would run these high ISO images through Topaz Denoise as part of my processing, but with Lightroom's new masking, I now find it much easier to just stay in Lightroom, mask out the subject, and use texture, sharpness, and noise sliders to bring the noise down in the background and shadows.