Well, into December already and soon the wild brownies in the river will be joining the salmon in the annual spawning ritual.  There is certainly plenty of water about at present to enable them to move to the spawning beds.  We have had a very wet week and the river was running in full spate on Friday night after a torrential downpour that lasted all evening.

My request for volunteers to help plant trees has met with a deafening silence so i plan to go ahead anyway and see how many can be got in next Sunday weather permitting.  All I need to do in the interim is to clear this with the landowner.

There was a remarkable photograph in the paper on Friday showing a heron with a 1.5lb brownie speared on its beak.  The chap who took the picture down in Hampshire apparently waited for hours to get the shot and it rather begs the question as to what happened next?  How did the grey poacher get the fish off?  Did it manage to swallow such a large catch?  Judging from the expression on its face it did seem somewhat surprised.  Talking of herons I have yet to see the bird that is permanently stationed on a rock below Settle weir catch anything.  I guess it must do as there would be little point in spending so many hours at this exposed spot if there were no reward, but heron do seem to be blessed with almost inexhaustible patience and persistence.  Something I have in short supply after spending two days rebuilding all the lost data on my hard drive (see last weeks blog).  I have now invested in an external hard drive to which I can back up everything so fingers crossed!

I am delighted to say that for the first time in the 5 years that I have been keeper here the swans on the Tarn have managed to raise two healthy cygnets to maturity.  They are still clumsy fliers, but can art least take off sufficiently now to avoid predators.  Both cygnets are turning white and will soon be looking for their own territory as I doubt if the cob will tolerate the youngsters around into next breeding season. We shall see.  Interestingly the parents have not left the Tarn all autumn.  Usually by now they have vanished for a few weeks to return after Christmas. 

More next week.

Ian