Hardly anyone about today, in rain and thick mizzle. The jays everywhere busy with the acorns, and excited redwings calling among the rowan berries. I spilled about a pound of peanuts by the feeders, so the pheasants were delighted. Unsung heroine Cynthia blitzing the shop, shaking the summer's dead flies out of the roof blinds and hoovering them up off the carpet. Scope for a research project there for somebody, surely? Diptera of a Mid-Wales Retail Outlet: Dead Flies of Lake Vyrnwy. Down by the Stilling Pool footbridge, nuthatches were noisy, and one was investigating a nestbox. Have a look at the Obelisk sculpture and you will see - it includes a nestbox. The nuthatch stood beside it, pointing down, and then a treecreeper walked up the very next tree, pointing up, just like in the field guides. Briefly, a buzzard overhead, and a raven quoth something inconsequential up the lake a bit. The water surprisingly low, after its constant high level for a couple of years during the scouring and relining of the cast iron pipes to Liverpool. Fish trying and failing to climb the weir below the dam. Fly agaric doing well here and there, and some enormous boletes beside wet birches. I love it when it's quiet.
Graham