Birr - Wildlife

I have never seen so many of these butterflies all in one place - Brimstones, I think.
On the agapanthus they had to thrust themselves right up into the flowers to get at the nectar, whereas on the more open flowers they could just land - if you look, you should be able to see the proboscis of the one on the pink flowers. Even in flight when they were coming in to land on those flowers, the proboscis was out and ready - but the photo is blurred.

No dainty butterfly this - that body and legs are positively chunky!

One super-size dragonfly - haven't had time to check out my wildlife book yet. The first time I saw one flit across the lake I thought it was a small bird, and when I finally got to see one at rest after a long time stalking them and waiting, I'd say the body could have been 3 inches long.

He's pretty well camouflaged, but in one part where there was a little swampy stream with reeds and grasses, there were a whole flock of blue tits flitting around. Delightful to watch. (And with any luck, soon C is going to decide to get me a tele-converter for my lens!). I just wish I was better at remembering bird calls - while I was watching them there was something in a bush behind me making a funny almost hissing sound. But while I am good on music and can generally pick out the right chords for a song after hearing it a few times, I just can't get to grips with bird calls.


Swallows on the wire in the car park. When we arrived the lines were full of birds, which C thought were swallows but I thought were swifts or martens. As we were a bit later than we would have liked, he didn't have time to check through his spotting scope, he had to head straight to his meeting. But on comparing the photos I took then with the ones I took when we were leaving, I still maintain the ones in the morning didn't have those long forked tails.