Birds

I'm sitting here watching the rain beat down on the windows above me - after almost ten days of lovely sunshine and blue skies, it's been getting greyer and greyer as the week progressed.

But while I was able to sit out more in the garden last week, that also gave me a chance to see more of the birds...The blackbird was certainly enjoying the sun. I saw a magpie sunning one day as well.

A great tit in the hawthorn trees at the end of the garden, and another one enjoying a sunflower seed snack...

Juvenile and adult robins

And a goldfinch just because I don't often get a good photo of one in the squirrel-proof feeders, but the bright sunshine helped.

And our own mid-morning "snack" - halfway to making cappuccino :D. The gaskets for our Dualit coffee machine are no longer available except by buying a whole brewhead as well,  but I was able to buy  Krupps gaskets exactly the same size. It was about time for a new one!!

Garden Sunshine 2

And the rest of the photos from the Botanic Gardens.

I loved the scarring on this succulent leaf. Even the little line at the right looks like stitches.

Echium webbi (Boraginaceae)

Garden Sunshine

Monday was, in fact, the least sunny day of our holiday weekend...but it was still lovely enough that we took a trip to the Botanic Gardens, our first of the year.

Some photos now, more to follow tomorrow.

A Bird of Another Feather

One afternoon last week I had a phone-call from C. He recently moved offices and his lunch-time walks have taken on a different tenor! No more the leafy green streets around Dublin 2, he's now in the docklands area. And he wanted to know how to use the zoom on his camera phone, because the USCGS Eagle was in town. When he said "coastguard ship", I didn't realise he meant something like our old Asgard! He came home with the first of these photos - and the one of the guillemots.

And this Monday at lunchtime, he made the longer walk all the across the river to visit the ship and came home with more photos for me  - so all the photos in this post are actually his, not mine at all. But I didn't have time to go and see it. It reminded me so much of when we visited the Maritime Museum in Barcelona - as well as the main museum they have a sailing ship moored across the road, which we visited.

Birds of a feather...

Our squirrel-proof feeders don't lend themselves to bird photography - but with the warm sunny weather we've had all week, I've been able to catch a few shots of birds in the garden - we have quite a few wood pigeons who keep the grass around the feeders short as they trample round looking for any fallen seed.

I also managed to capture the semi-juvenile robin that I saw the other day. And another one that I am sad about - one of his legs is trailing loosely behind him and I feel sure that he won't survive - although I'd love to be wrong.

Somehow I feel as if I've been seeing a lot of cards with wild roses on them recently. Here's one growing over our end wall.

Sunny Southeast

I was down in Waterford on Tuesday - a few quick snaps. There is a strong Viking heritage, hence the boat sculpture which was in the centre of a small roundabout.

May Favourites...

Not very many favourite cards for May - I made some chalked Christmas cards which I really liked but it's too unseasonal to upload them here!

Not very many photos to choose a header from either, in my June 2015 folder. This is a bluetit feeding a young one. Today I saw a relatively juvenile robin scavenging on the back lawn, but was unable to take any photos.