Up at the Tarn first thing this morning it was good to see the number of rises to fly, some quite aggressive with at least one porpoise leap.  The conditions are calm and muggy with a lot of threatening cloud.  We are forecast much rain later today so an already high river will no doubt be back in full spate by this evening.

I sometimes wonder about the amount of damage to fish that the heron who frequent the river do, but rarely find any evidence of predation such as dead fish or heavily marked fish in the river.  It would seem that they are not so lucky down in Derbyshire judging by the last video clip on Warren Slaney's excellent blog.  This shows just how much harm heron can do to a healthy, well stocked natural fishery.  With so much emphasis on protecting birds at the expense of  native fish there is little that can be done to counter this other than constant scaring.  Fortunately the river here has been often high this summer which prevents the grey poacher from fishing the pools and fast runs.

We are being invaded today by my 18 month old nephew so it's off now to bolt down everything below 3ft from the carpet and take a couple of tranquilisers.

Ian