Clematis

Busy day, sunny day, not much time...

Eastern Blooms

Another day of hot, hot sunshine. As I wasn't working I took a trip to Farmleigh.

C is feeling - well, I don't know quite what the right word is - he says that I have seen jays there and today I saw tree-creepers and he's never seen either any time he has been. But he saw them both in St. Catherine's Park, so he shouldn't feel too deprived.

Tree-creeper

I said I'd been experimenting with red cabbage -this is my final version. It's certainly not worth using balsamic vinegar as per the more modern recipe I tried, but the cranberries seem to be much nicer than apple.

Red Cabbage with Cranberries:
For half a red cabbage I used one red onion (because I had it, although I am sure an ordinary onion would be pretty much the same),  a little oil, 2 tblsp each brown sugar and wine vinegar, a pinch of allspice and about two ounces / 50 g dried cranberries.

Heat the oil, fry the sliced onion gently for a few minutes. Add the finely sliced cabbage and fry gently for another few minutes. Add the sugar, vinegar, spice and cranberries plus a little water  - enough just to keep it moist. Cover and simmer gently for about 45 minutes, stirring a couple of times.

This would probably give about six servings as a side dish.

What a difference a day makes...

Crying to be fed: doesn't he look cute, that little head popping up out of the gutter.



Out foraging  - and not afraid to venture into the house either. In the late afternoon, unfortunately, the sun is shining towards the back door which always makes it harder to watch the birds. But since the camera was handy and he was in no hurry to take flight I just did the best I could. He's not at all fazed by the fact that C was about 4 feet away taking the rear mudguard off the motorbike.

Highlights from last June

It was very hard to pick just one photo from last June for my blog header this month.
So I decided to share all the photos that I was torn between using :D.
The Californian Poppies one is what we used on our calendar for the noticeboard in the kitchen.

And my favourite card for May.

 

It was so funny watching the little coal tits this morning. At one stage there was a pair flying in, but one seemed to be doing duty as an escort or a kind of wingman. One would land on the feeder, the second one would perch nearby, the first would grab a bit of food and then they'd both fly back together towards the trees. I haven't seen that before, but it was happening consistently over quite a period.

Mostly Kerry

Well, that was a busy weekend and then some. We went to Killarney for a funeral on Saturday. Somebody got the time wrong and we could have got up and left at 7.30 instead of 6.30, but at least it was a reasonably fine, dry day and the church was right beside Killarney National Park so we were able to enjoy a walk and stretch our legs.

In the town:

In the park - it was wonderful watching the swallows swooping and diving over the long meadow grass.

We stayed the night in Tralee, with the bonus of rabbit-watching. As long as I can remember there have been rabbits along the driveway of the house behind where we stay.

On to Kenmare on Sunday to visit my dad and cook dinner.  When we left I managed to leave behind not only my good loaf tin which had had a fruit-cake I had baked for him, but also a spare punnet of strawberries which was not intended for him, as I'd already left some mixed strawberries, raspberries and blueberries. Oh well...

Bridge at Kenmare

Dewy spider's web

Back home, and then up to the North on Monday, for a total of over 700 miles. This was a rainbow I photographed through the car window on our way back home last night.

These days I try to cook in advance when we visit my dad, and bring stuff that really just needs heating and a carbohydrate and vegetables to go with it. But since we were leaving home early on Saturday, with no idea when I'd have access to a fridge, that wasn't practical this time. I thought if I did a stir-fry I could have the vegetables with me, and the sauce ingredients mixed, and we could just buy some chicken down there.

This is what I cooked:

Chicken and Cashew Nuts (serves 4)

12 oz chicken breast, sliced into 1" pieces and tossed in 1 tblsp cornflour (cornstarch )

Seasoning: 1 tsp salt, 1 tsp toasted sesame oil, 1 tblsp light soy sauce, 1/2 tsp sugar.

1 cup cashew nuts

2 green onions / spring onions, chopped

1 small onion peeled and cut into chunks

1" fresh ginger root, peeled and thinly sliced

2 cloves garlic, sliced thinly

3 oz snow peas, sugar snaps or mangetout

2 oz bamboo shoots, thinly sliced

Oil for frying.

Sauce: 2 tsp cornflour, 1 tblsp Hoisin sauce, 3/4 cup chicken stock.

Mix the seasoning ingredients together, pour over the chicken and leave for ten minutes.

Fry the cashew nuts till golden brown, and drain on paper towel.

Heat 2 tbslp of oil and fry the onions, ginger and garlic for 2-3 minutes. Add the peas and bamboo shoots and fry for another 3 minutes.  

Remove from pan, clean the pan and heat another tablespoon of oil. Fry the chicken for 3-4 minutes, till cooked. Add the vegetables back into the pan, along with the spring onions. Mix together the sauce ingredients, add to the pan and cook till heated and thick.

C being fussy about whole garlic I used crushed garlic rather than slices.

Although the recipe called for bamboo shoots, the photograph in the book showed beansprouts, and since I was able to get them in Tralee that is, in fact, what I used. I also added some pineapple chunks.

Windows on the World

The current photo challenge on SCS is windows. These are some of the shots I took....

The Law Society

Boston College, Stephen's Green

Steven's Hospital

Corner of Dame Street and Trinity Street

Queen Street (I think!)

Plenty of potential for lots more photos for this subject. I always like to look up above ground level and see what's on view along the streets.

Baby, Maybe Baby

I went out to bring the sheets in from the line before it started to rain, and was rewarded with one of the more daring baby robins. When I consider all the different places I hear their insistent "Feed me" cheeping from, and see all the directions the parents fly off in, it must be quite a stressful time for the parents. Especially with those magpies around!

Feed Me

Feeding looks to be a bit of a hit and miss affair still!!

Definitely a baby sparrow

This little coalie is so scruffy that I wonder is it a juvenile. Either that or moulting, because this was not any time after a rain shower.

Likewise this little blue with his Gary Rhodes spiky hairdo...

...or maybe in his case it was just the wind!!

Raiders of the back porch. Not a great shot, but in their endeavour to keep those little beaks fed, the robins aren't afraid to come into the back porch. They obviously sussed out where the worms come from.

Goldfinches

 in the garden this morning...
I had to shoot through the back window because I didn't want to scare them off (and you can see them take flight when a leaf lands on the feeder, although a pigeon passing overhead didn't seem to bother them). And of course it had to be the long side panel beside the door; I cleaned the door itself just last week. So the colour and the sounds are just slightly muted.
I was really watching out because I'd caught a fleeting glimpse of a baby robin, but I wasn't lucky enough to see it again today. Just the parents at their endless task of feeding themselves and their brood.

I'm trying to find a way to link to YouTube that doesn't offer a choice of videos at the end. What that does is seem to make the embedded video bigger so in the preview mode it looks as if you only see one half of it. Bear with me while I work this out! In any case, clicking on it will bring up the full view - which is worth it because there was a pair of birds. And I do think they're a pair - apparently the red patch protrudes just slightly more over the eye in the male, and there's a definite difference between these two.

A Park Walk

Now that all our high-profile guests have been and gone, the park is open again and we can park in our normal spot. Since yesterday was a lovely bright sunny evening, though still a little windy, we went for a walk after dinner.

Jackdaw in the woods

Deer in the parkland

Look carefully - you can just see the little coot chicks climbing out of the nest.

A coot chick. I always want to call them moorhens because of the red beaks, but they must change colour as they get older. For sure it's adult coots feeding them, as per the very short video. I need to find a way of cutting the sound out when it's not suitable for use - C was singing over most of this. I think I'll have to use some birthday money and invest...

Well - everything uploaded today with no problems. I don't know where my two birds in a bush photos ended up last night because they're not showing in my album. The mysteries of cyber-space!!

Two Birds in the Bush

A bird in the hand last year was certainly a magical and memorable experience. Failing that, two in the bush is better than nothing. And in fact, I saw a lot more than two today.
It was a delight to see a goldfinch again today (a pair, in fact) and I also saw a greenfinch, which I hadn't seen for a while. I am wondering if the little robins have fledged, because while the adults are still foraging away busily and industriously, instead of flying off in the same direction all the time they seemed to head into the trees in several different directions - and there was a massive amount of cheeping as opposed to birdsong going on.



We still have quite a bit of wind, but no rain today. Bet the birds are glad - I was too when I got two lots of wash dry after work.

I was trying to upload photos and a short video from our walk in the park this evening, but it's all failed, so sorting it out is tomorrow's task.