Ilkley Baptist

Rainfall for June has reached 6.86 inches this morning, and I'm starting to think of records. The second highest total I've measured was September 1997 in Cheadle Hulme, when we had 7.29 inches; we had more than 7 ins the next month, and more than 5 ins in November, and there was widespread flooding. It looks likely that we'll pass 7.29 today. The highest ever was August 2004, in Ilkley, with 8.32 inches. The weatherforecast suggests that even this might be at risk today. As I sit here typing, it's slackened off a bit, so I doubt we'll get that much, but there's quite a bit of the month left and rain expected for the next few days, so there's a chance of a new monthly record.

Over the past few weeks I've been watching a kestrel's nest on Ilkley Moor. There seemed to be two chicks (though the bundle of grey fluff was hard to make out). The very heavy rain on the 15th June caused a bit of flooding in town, and up on the moor the streams were hugely swollen. I went up on the 16th and found the nest empty. My first assumption was that the chicks had succumbed to the rain, but there were no bodies and no feathers anywhere, so perhaps they had fledged sufficiently to leave the nest. Whether their feathers would have been sufficiently developed to keep them warm and dry away from the safetly of their ledge is another matter. Poor things.