Cork catch-up

 I said that I had been down to Cork in February, and I shared a few photos in my February Favourites resumé. If I'd known we'd see so many birds I'd have packed either a tripod and longer lens or my bridge camera which has a longer zoom, but I was stuck with what I had. The full album is here: https://photos.app.goo.gl/MJj9cU2yvrvwXPsm6

The small castle is Blackrock Castle and Observatory, which my sister said we'll visit another time. 

Since I already shared the bird highlights in that earlier post, I will here include a few shots from my January visit, which was a walk in the same place but closer to the city along the river Lee. 

And having caught up with January and February, that means that I should be able to add a post from Farmleigh some time this week. We've had a couple of lovely sunny days where you could really feel the warmth of the sun - Thursday was one of those, so after doing the shopping I took my camera and headed out straight away seeing that Friday's forecast was not so good.  The first days of sunshine were so welcome - the amount of grey days with no sunshine at all was getting to be so long that it was making newspaper headlines. 

February Favourites

 Once again are thin on the ground...

We had such dismal weather - it was making the news headlines when some parts of the country had seen no sunshine for 10 days. So my sister and I decided that last weekend was probably a better bet than the previous one for me to go down to Cork. It probably was - Sunday was very wild, wet and windy but we had a lovely walk along the Lee in the afternoon on Saturday, and with the tide going out, got to see more than just seagulls. It was especially lovely to see two curlews - we heard them on one of our walks elsewhere last year but didn't see them. This time it was see but not here. I still haven't edited my photos from that walk yet, so I'll just add a few photos here and then (hopefully) have a link to an album next time I manage to make a post. 

Curlew, curlew with oystercatchers, turnstone, plover, and a painted drainage something or other - the little ladybird was painted over a protrusion in the pipework. If I'd known that we were likely to see so many birds I'd either have brought my Nikon or a longer lens for my Olympus, but with the weather forecast being what it was, I had no great expectations. 

This month's blog header is some snakeshead fritillaries in Farmleigh, taken last March. 

January favourites

are very slim pickings...I like the first one which was almost entirely scraps from various containers on my desk, apart from the crimped ATC base, crimping being what was called for.  And the third one was fun because while looking for something to create a background for the dolphin, I spotted the cover of a pad of watercolour paper.

I visited my sister for a weekend in the middle of the months. Days were still shorter then (loving the already noticeable lengthening in the days) and the weather wasn't very inspiring, but we did go for a walk along the Marina Walk by the Lee. They're doing a lot of flood relief works so not all of the paths were accessible, but it was somewhere I'd never been before and it was a pleasant outing. Small (15 photos) album is HERE. 

The blog header is from a February visit to my sister last year - again, pretty dismal weather. As I recall, at that stage my sister had put her camera away, it not being in any way weatherproof.