Spring is Springing

 We finally had some bright sunshine weather, so I fitted a trip to Farmleigh in on Thursday morning. Unfortunately the walled gardens were just being closed for maintenance when I got there - if I'd known that I might have waited till today which was also a bright sunny day. But that's life.

My eye was caught straight away by a duck that didn't look like a mallard - and which did indeed turn out to be a shoveler. I have a feeling I might have seen them in the Zoo, which is also in the park, and we have definitely seen them in the bird reserve down in Newcastle, but it was the first time I'd seen one here. I think there was a female with it too - they are very similar in colouring to female mallards, so while I was there I just thought it was a mallard, but when I zoomed in on a couple of photos, I could see that it also had the distinctive long bill.

I also got lucky and was able to grab a few photos of a little wren.

Then we have some backlit magnolia buds and a couple of flowers, and a still life someone had created on one of the picnic tables, along with a glimpse into the walled garden through one of the gates.

Autumn fades

 I took a trip to Farmleigh one morning last week when it was bright and sunny - and on the chillier side. Most of the colour from my previous visit had gone, and the herbaceous borders had pretty much been cleared out. 

I really liked the decaying hosta leaf, and in the walled garden, a rose petal had fallen onto a leaf. 

A beach - at last

 We took a few days break away from home last week, and camped in my brother's garden so it really felt like a holiday - especially combined with the amazing weather we've been having. 

Our first outing was to a nearby beach, and it was wonderful to walk on sand, paddle (and swim) after barely having seen the sea for over a year and a half.

It wasn't a large bay - but large enough when we walked to one end from the car park, and then to other end and back.

We saw plenty of gulls (mostly black-headed), some oyster-catchers, an unknown little brown bird, and at each end there were sand martins nesting in the "cliff" front. I could swear I heard a curlew too though I didn't see one. It's possible, I used to see them from the train when I was visiting my Dad in Midleton. 

Due to the blogger issues I'm not going to try to sort them all in order. 

Sand martins on fence

Oyster-catcher

Martin nests 

Black-headed gull

I'll be back with some photos over the next few days. We also visited Fota Gardens and Arboretum, and had two forest walks. 

Mostly birds

 I discovered, recently, that there was another pond in the Phoenix Park which I wasn't familiar with, so I took a detour and visited it last week. It's small, very much a pond, but set back a bit from the road and very peaceful. I watched squirrels chasing each other, a young moorhen (I think) feeding, and a thrush bathing. 

I tried to take photos of the thrush bathing, but because it was quite shady - the pond is surrounded by trees, a video was the better option. 

The other photos are just a sparrow feeding a young one, in the garden, and the Highland cattle in St Catherine's Park, which we visited for a walk one evening last week. Hard to get a photo with the lowe evening light and the long growth in the water meadow, but it was lovely. 

Tag, you're it...

 I went for a cycle and walks in the park this morning - yesterday was intermittent rain and positively cold. Today was mostly sunny and warm. I have no idea what order Blogger is going to put the photos in and I'm not going to spend a lot of time rearranging them, so I'll upload them and then add text to each one, in case they're not in chronological order. 

So, definitely nothing like chronological order. This was when I had had my walk in the People's Garden, and was cycling back up the hill towards the Ordnance Survey. I could see a group of people (a bit more than twice this number, maybe) walking through the long grass and weeds, all with big nets. There was another man walking along the footpath with a camera, so I asked him what they were doing. He said that they were trying to find the young fawns, to tag them. Sure enough, the signs asking people to be careful and not to let their dogs loose in the areas of long grass have been up for a while now. I can certainly think of worse ways to spend a morning. The photographer said he thought that there were a couple of park rangers but that some of them were students from college.

Before leaving the park, I detoured into the Quarry Pond. As soon as I opened the gate, the less somnolent ducks, along with jackdaws, came over hoping for food. It's mostly mallards there (gone are the glory days of the mandarins, alas), with some coots and moorhens. Last year there were a couple of Muscovy ducks and this looks similar, with the wonderful iridescent green plumage and red beak. He's much larger than the mallards, and was very persistent. As I pushed my bike along the path I could hear a pitter patter of feet in the leaves behind me, and when I looked, it was this one still following me until he realised I obviously didn't have anything. 

Next up, enjoying the sun just as much as the ducks at the entry gate, was this sun-bathing squirrel. I was reluctant to disturb him, but he was lying right across the path - and once he got going, it was obvious that there was nothing wrong with him at all, he was just enjoying the warmth of the morning. 

When I first entered the People's Gardens, I spotted this thrush collecting worms. Once she had a beak full, she took off over the road in the direction of the zoo. 

This was also in the People's Gardens. The coot chicks are growing fast, though I guess it's a couple of weeks since I went in to look. Their wings are no longer the little stumpy things that they were. This one was swimming around and happily diving for food, with a watchful adult escort. The other two (there is in fact another one behind the one you can see) were sitting on the nest enjoying the sunshine and occasionally grooming themselves - which is why I could see how much their wings had grown. No sign of the swans and cygnets. 

May Favourites

 I need more time! I have photos from two walks in the park waiting to be edited.

I shared a couple with a friend by email, so here are two from my outing this Wednesday - the cygnets had finally hatched.  While I was watching them waddling up the bank, one of the herons landed on the fence and was promptly shooed off by the parent swans. 

May was quite a good month on the card-making front, despite being pretty busy in work and not having much energy left over.

I tried uploading a recent video of coot chicks to YouTube, but it seemed to compress it so much that the quality was badly effected and I never even sent the link to my sister. I'm trying the Blogger option of inserting a video file from the computer here, and hoping that it will not be so badly affected. 

p.s - I think their fronts are dirty from the water!!

I hope to be along tomorrow with a couple of "hot off the needles" projects.  

This month's blog header is from Farmleigh last June.