Once again it has been exceptionally mild this autumn. Mushrooms are out in abundance and they provide a few flashes of vivid colour in an otherwise black and brown world. It was genuinely amazing and pleasing therefore to see the brilliant flash of blue of a kingfisher flying swiftly through the bare trees deep in the woods at Inny foot. The rivers are quite swollen, fast flowing and turbid now and I wonder how kingfishers are seeing enough fish to survive on.
We occasionally see a flash of brown and yellow through the trees and hedges in the garden as a sparrowhawk swoops down on a sparrow or goldfinch but never before have I seen one sat so close to the house, posing for a photograph, and in the pouring rain.
