It looks as if Simon's summer holiday is over and he will have to return early to work.  I had an email from Ian W yesterday following an early morning trip to fish the Tarn.  On arrival at Tarn Pasture he spotted a cormorant busy breakfasting on our rainbows.  This is worrying as the pterodactyls normally turn up in late October once fishing (by humans) has ceased.  We need to keep a good record of sightings of these predators if we are to persuade DEFRA that we have a problem that needs resolving.  They demand evidence before they will grant a licence to cull cormorants so all members should continue to record their encounters with cormorants at the Tarn in the wildlife book in the hut and email me.  If you can get photos so much the better.  These birds are capable of devastating a fishery and their predation has already closed the famous fishery at Loch Leven where many of the brown trout ova and fry came from early last century to stock the river.  They are capable of eating their own body weight of fish a day and their presence spooks the fish sending them down deep and deterring them from surface feeding.  It's a threat I am determined to counter.

Mind you the damn birds probably think it is November on account of the abysmal weather here at present.  It rained all day yesterday and is still doing so this morning.  The river is high and coloured, not yet in spate, but too high to do the last two invertebrate checks safely.  We seem to be sitting under our own personal cloud as a few miles away in whatever direction you travel there is sun and fine weather. 

Ian