One Sunny Day

When we were driving home from Coole, the skies cleared to a lovely blue. And the next morning we had another window of good-weather opportunity. It hadn't been in the forecast, so we weren't prepared for a longer drive but we took an outing to a lake that was not too far away. With the sun out, it was quite warm on the limestone once we were out of the wind. We saw plenty of wagtails, a female chaffinch and some unidentified small brown birds.

More of Clare

Our second outing was to Coole, one of our regular places to visit. I still remember the time we went over a New Year, when there had been heavy flooding in the locality followed by some freezing weather. Some of the paths were inaccessible, and some had a layer of ice over shallow water. That was a much abbreviated but memorable and enjoyable walk. 

The first two photos are part of a series, a facsimile copy of one of Yeats' poems. 

No swans (or hares, we've seen those here before) to be seen - all I found was three swan feathers. And despite the fact that apparently it has been a very dry summer down there, the lake was quite full, and towards the end of it there were parts where the narrow trail was submerged. 

There was an amazing thicket of wild raspberries - ripe, juicy, sweet. I wished I'd had something to collect some in. As it was, we just enjoyed a passing snack. 

Plenty of assorted fungi - and a young frog who still seemed to have part of his tail. 

A brief interlude

in the country. We were able to go to Clare for a few days last week. C had to take 10 days compulsory leave before the end of August, and I couldn't take any time off after July 20, so we got away while we could. The weather was mixed, but it was a really nice break. I'll share a few photos here and maybe in another post - there is an album with 58 photos HERE. 

The photos here are from Dromore Wood Nature Reserve, with the last two being the lake beside the cottage we stayed in, and the view over the lake from the house. 

Things with Wings...

And no, this time it's not birds.
I've been feeling that I should finish off my Paris trip before making more posts - but being realistic in the summer days I just don't get a lot of photo editing done. And now my good widescreen monitor is in the throes of giving up the ghost (so that it spends more time on the floor not working than it does in front of me). So that will have to be a rainy day project - I really do want to share some of my Giverny photos.
Here are some of the wildlife that I took when we had a week's holiday over in the west of Ireland earlier this month. We were mostly in Clare but also spent a couple of days in Connemara.

Black-tailed skimmer

Common Blue Damselfly

The first butterfly shot isn't as good but I had to include it - take a look at that eye!!

I only took my Canon with me this time, since I wasn't even bringing the laptop. Disaster nearly struck when I realised that I'd left the charger at home. Even with one spare fully-charged battery, that wasn't going to be enough for a week. Luckily a good old-fashioned camera shop in Ennis had a multi-purpose charger with moveable contacts, and checked that it would work with my batteries. Now I can even charge them in car if necessary - pretty unlikely, though. Thankfully C understood that a holiday without a camera for me would be like him having to do without his guitar, so he was happy to make the unscheduled trip and purchase.

Whistlestop Weekend

My current header is a photo I took of a sparrowhawk down in Clare last year. We were there again last weekend. We almost didn't make it, since C has been sick and we'd already had to cancel going the previous weekend, and I was afraid we'd missed the best of the weather.
But in fact we had an absolutely glorious day on Saturday and covered loads of ground with small on-foot excursions from the car.

I'm afraid that Blogger wasn't being very cooperative in uploading the photos so I've had to snag them from my Picasa album. Rather than spend a lot of time putting them in the right order I'll just caption them.
Chronologically we went from the cottage over towards Abbey Hill and then walked along above the beach at Finvara. We saw the oystercatcher there (digital zoom, so it's a bit pixelly), and the wigeon were on the lake there.  There were very few people at the dolmen so we stopped there instead of passing by as we normally do. It seems a shame to have it roped off, but I suppose that's modern life for you. Any photos I have without the ropes and signs are definitely pre-digital.
Since we pass Dromore Woods on the way home and since it was such a gorgeous day we stopped there for a walk around the woods too. It's somewhere we often go on rainy days as the woods are quite dense and we don't get too wet walking around - so seeing it in dappled sunshine was a lovely change.

Apologies again for the jumbled order - it's hard enough just now to find time to post, never mind discovering that half my uploaded photos have gone AWOL.
I think it's lucky we went last weekend - today there has been a real nip in the air and we've had to turn the heating on for half an hour. It looks as if summer is finally over.

Blackberries by Lough Bunny

Poulnabrone Dolmen

Poulnabrone Dolmen

Dromore Castle

View over towards Galway from Abbey Hill

Wigeon and swan

Lough Bunny - it rained on Sunday!

Poulnabrone Dolmen

Wigeon

Oystercatcher

Reeds on lake

View of lake from the cottage

View from Abbey Hill