One Hot Day!!

It was such a treat to be able to go to Birr today, even if means that I haven't really had a day off this week, as I had to get up early on Monday to go to the doctor and early today to travel with C. We went a different route to our usual one, and now we've found a way that only takes an hour and three quarters to get there, I am sure we will go again soon  for a day together. But goodness, if it was hot in the car going down, it was even hotter come back. So I am pretty tired from the heat and the long day, and have just picked a few photos that didn't need anything except resizing and don't need to go together.
Seeing the dipper was a real treat - we've seen it there once before, the same time we saw a Pine Marten. I wasn't that lucky this time. At least I was lucky in that the dipper started out on my side of the river, making my first photo the best.

When I sat down at a picnic bench to have a drink and change the lens on my camera to take the view across the lake, there was the greatest rustling in the reeds at the edge - you can just see a duck flying up. He wasn't actually meant to be in the photo at all.Obviously they are well used to being fed by people at the picnic bench, as a pair of them stood around hopefully quacking away gently till I moved on.

This, the lady I was talking to who works there, thinks is some type of Chinese bird - a goose, I guess.

Most of the morning the only sounds were water, birds, insects, more birds, more water and the sound of my feet on the paths - so relaxing. And the scents - green grassy, woody, roses, azaleas, mock orange...wonderful.

We are treating friends to a meal out tomorrow - a long-standing tradition when they come home on holidays from Africa, so I don't know if I'll have time to get any more photos sorted out till the weekend. And it's hard to capture all those  wide open meadow spaces and trees with photos, they just don't do it justice.