Rain Keep Falling

Torrential rains today, the water butt is full again and the overflow butt is a third full, so for once I am free of watering duties.  Driving to Presteigne this morning it was warm and dusty - breakfast outside, a rare treat - and this afternoon it was warm and very wet.  Rain-mists drifting through the pine trees on Shropshire hills, dripping off the low trees at the school.  The weather unsettled the birds; we saw two woodpeckers - probably great spotted we think, too black-and-white for green woodpeckers and too big for lesser spotteds - over the fields at the back and feeding on the telegraph poles, and two siskins pecked at the depleted seed tubes in front of the living room windows.   There were hundreds of swifts over Presteigne, presumably feeding off the rising columns of insects who were anticipating the rain storms.  The storms passed and this evening it is stuffy and close once more, but of course it was great for the garden.