Quick Picks

We've had bitterly cold weather this week, some snow, some grey skies and some lovely sunshine - mostly in the mornings.
The snow never actually lay on the ground that long, and on Monday it was so windy that what little there was formed drifts, leaving open green spaces and sudden white patches.

This photo is our neighbour's roof, where it looked like a fine dusting of icing (confectioners) sugar.

A quick snap of one of the robins. I was planting some sweetpea seedlings into pots the other day, and the robins were in heaven because they found a treasure-trove of worms underneath the sack of potting soil!

I'm not sure if this is some type of breeding plumage on the cormorant. I need to look back over older photos. It was the red splash that first caught my eye - and then I saw how much white there was on the head - as if he'd been sprinkled with snow too! The other day, for the first time ever, I saw not just one or two of them but six all perched on the wall across the road from Heuston Station. Digital zoom, so slightly more pixellated than I like.

And a fine black-headed gull.

Google are terminating Reader! How can they do that!! I'll have to find another programme before the clock runs out.

Cards

...and just finished reading: The Elephant Keepers' Children by Peter Hoeg. I picked it up in the library recently, because I had read and quite enjoyed Miss Smilla's Feeling for Snow when it came out. C took a vague look at the book and dismissed it as not for him. But after he heard me giggling away here and there as I was reading it, he gave it a go, and it was my turn to hear him chuckling away. We renewed it again and passed it on to his mother who said she enjoyed it so much and she too laughed a lot. (Never having been over 5 foot even at her tallest, and now probably a couple of inches less, I think she really enjoyed the description of the short grandmother standing on things to reach the kitchen table). It was a strange book, slightly surreal (it reminded me of Sophie's World), but thoroughly enjoyable.

Favourite cards for February:

City Heron

Just a few very quick edits from Monday morning. It's hard to believe that the photo with the old shopping trolley and the reflections of the bridge was taken barely fifty metres from the others, which are right in front of Heuston Station.

Birds

Lots of photos in some glorious sunshine this morning. But Monday is a very busy day for me, and I won't have time to edit them till later on in the week.
But I have a few from the garden  - some we don't often see.
First up is a female blackcap, and with a sparrow. We've seen the male quite a bit, but this is the first time I've seen the hen.

Wow - some change in colour cast over the days - although also the first photo was taken through the window, and the second from outside. We don't often see long-tailed tits on the feeders. They're so comical with their tiny little bodies and stubby heads and those long tails. I've been seeing a lot of them round the place recently, and they always make me smile.

A siskin - female, I think. It's only the second time I've seen one ever. The first time was rather fraught on two counts; it was when my mother was dying, and we'd gone over to my sister for the afternoon for some time out and a break from the hospital, and one of her cats caught a siskin so she went tearing out to scare the cat before he damaged the bird. I'm pretty sure the bottom photo, with the goldfinches, is a siskin too, but I'm going to check that with my sister.

Not at home, although we have two hen and one male blackbird who are now regular visitors and fly in every time they hear me whistle for the robin. It's getting a bit like trying to feed two dogs who want to eat from each others bowls!! This one was in a tree along the canal bank. I enjoyed waching him while I waited at the level crossing for the barriers to go up.

And finally, this  is one from this morning. I often see a couple of grey wagtails flitting across the Liffey - usually I hear them first and know to look for the flash of yellow. This morning there were five of them, and instead of flying further and further away, a couple of them actually flew closer, and one landed on the wall quite near me.

We have at last had some welcome sunshine - not done with the grey weather yet and it's still bitterly cold in the wind, but oh, blue skies are a tonic!

Urban Birds...

...and a dash of optimism.

The photos are a bit grainy because I had digital zoom on for some of them.

I don't get to see black-backed gulls all that often - I think, from the deep black, that this is a Greater rather than a lesser.

I notice that some of the black-headed gulls are getting their summer plumage in already and starting to justify their name!

Cormorant, grooming.

On the chimney top of a house near the IMMA (Irish Museum of Modern Art).

Outside a café just before my bus-stop in town. Spring?? It might have been sunny, but it's still pretty darn cold.

Waxwings

February so far has been very grey. Saturday 2nd was beautiful, but we were out almost all day and could only enjoy it from the car. So, when I had to go down to get some fresh vegetables and meat on Friday, it was so dull that I made a deliberate decision not to bother with a camera. And I was nearly at the shops when I some birds that I thought were starlings, but they were flying in a very unusual flight pattern. When I looked more closely, I could see crests! More waxwings, and a whole treeful this time. I ran all the way back to the house, expecting that they'd probably be gone before I could get back again.
And they had, but I spotted this loner silhouetted against the sky in a tree on the other side of the road.

And then, after I'd posted my letter and done my shopping, I found another whole tree full of them in the car park between the school and the community centre. I was able to closer, too. But because of the grey weather, they're still not great photos. At least this time, though, I could clearly see not just the yellow but the red markings on the wings. I always remember about those from a Maggie Muggins story.

C, who did the shopping yesterday, went armed with the spotting scope but came back disappointed, having only seen goldfinches, chaffinches and blue tits.I hope he gets to see some soon before they migrate onwards again.


I usually wait till the end of the month before picking any cards to upload. But I had enormous fun making this one, even though it's hard to imagine finding an opportunity to use it. It was good therapy on a dull day when I was still getting over a bad cold, and had gone back to work too soon.

On the Way to Work

It's official - Dublin had the greyest January since 1964, with only 25 hours of sunshine recorded at Casement Aerodrome, and the highest number of rainy days since 1980. No wonder it hasn't been a good month for photographs! Yesterday I got the bus to the shopping centre after work, and I'd been planning to get another one back part way, and then pick up a package from Parcel Motel and walk the rest of the way home. But the skies opened and there was a torrential downpour. By the time the bus came I was very glad I had some cloth and PVC bags in my backpack to transfer the contenst of my rapidly disintegrating paper bags from TK Maxx, Boots and Dunnes into, and I did NOT get off to pick up the parcel. As it was, no sooner did I step off the bus than the rain switched to driving hail, so pretty much everything went into the airing cupboard to dry out.
Today, like yesterday, started out as a sunny morning, hence some photos. Like yesterday, though, it was raining when I got off the bus coming home - but at least nothing like yesterday. The bus driver was almost as glad as I was.

Ombre is one of the trends in card-making at the moment. I know I've posted a similar photo to this one of a pillar of the Frank Sherwin bridge before, but the light caught it beautifully this morning.
Then I saw a contrail lined up almost perfectly with one of the many cranes dotting the Guinness compound just now.

For all the times I have walked up Steeven's Lane and in towards town, I have never before seen the light shining through those two openings. It's got to be part of the row of old Guinness buildings fronting on to James' Street, but I couldn't see them from any other angle. Funny how you sometimes only see things once! Every time I go to the shopping centre now I look at the awning over the entrance where I saw all those starlings once, and I've never even seen one perched there since.

Lastly is John's Lane Church with gulls.

January Cards

January has been so busy! I hope February is going to be a bit quieter. I know the first weekend is busy, but I am telling C that the second weekend is down time, our first weekend this year with nothing scheduled so farr, and it had better stay like that.
I haven't even done my monthly quota of Christmas cards, just two. I'm sneaking one of them in here because I loved how it turned out.

I think we have a definite pair of robins now - I sometimes seem them arrive together on the patio when they hear me open the back door. And now the mornings are a little bit brighter, if it's not a dull overcast day so that it's still dark when I leave, I see them arriving for their breakfast when I go out to shut the back gate.
But Mr. Robin is still no knight in shining armour, the female can open her beak as much as she likes, but he's still not in courtship mode. I hope she's chosen the right mate!!

Sorry for the videos not working last time - I don't know if the default setting got changed somehow...

Cold Snap

Life feels a little bit like those Whack-a-Mole games just now - I get one thing on my list accomplished and two more spring up to take its place!
We've had some bitterly cold weather this week. On Monday there was a little snow - I loved the look of it on the bell tower of St. James' church - it reminded me a little of the pyramids outside the Louvre.

A cold-weather visitor was the male blackcap! Not great photos - the back window needs cleaning badly, but one of C's bikes is parked in front of it. We've seen a female in the garden before more than once - her cap is brown, and I was amazed to see how black the male really is.

Funny story - one of the days I was putting food out, all three robins were there. The boldest one, who I think of as dominant male (and who is now flying to the back door when he hears me) came zipping out to get some worms. The female opened her beak hoping to be fed - we've seen this courtship behaviour before. But Mr Robin's thoughts were not of love, they were of feeding himself in the cold weather so he just flew back to his perch ignoring her totally. A black mark against him as a potential father, I am sure!!

The second video is a very short snippet of the dominant male singing. I have one of the lesser male which shows the bird so much better, but no song. You can't win all the time!!