Favourite cards...

From August - before it gets to be October. I don't know where September went! It was a beautiful month, weatherwise; one brief cold spell and then an Indian summer. I was sick at the start, C is sick now, and in between we had a long weekend in Switzerland with friends. I've only edited a few photos, but I'll try to add them in a post for tomorrow if my computer doesn't keep on giving me grief.

Favourite August cards - not too many!.Since we're well over halfway through the year I'm sneaking in my favourite Christmas card of the month too.

Our little goldfinches are still flocking round, and for the first time since the summer I saw some long-tailed tits when I was out and about.
Here's a recent shot (through the still-dirty window) of two little goldfinches. The feeder used to have a base which fitted on, but at some stage the base of the feeder got broken (pigeons, I think!) and a couple of weeks back it was no longer possible to attach the base. It's a shame, because the smaller birds like the linnets, redpolls and goldfinches all loved it. I'll see if I can get another similar feeder now that autumn stocks are in. I've since pruned back the brambles, but we've had two apple and blackberry crumbles.

Growing Up Fast !

The little goldfinches are growing up fast. From the way some still have no red at all while some are breaking out into what looks like a virulent red rash, there must be at least two different families at the feeders these days. This afternoon I counted at least 7 - and since some were pecking around in the long grass for spilled seed, I wasn't even sure that I counted them all.
Sorry, again the photos are taken through the window - and after the torrential rain on Saturday it's even dirtier than it was before.

Birds...

As promised, I found a couple of photos of my hop-along gull.
He seems to show a marked preference for standing on solid ground (or at least some of the junk that litters the river bed!) and when you see the photo of the regular two-legged gull sinking into the mud it's not hard to understand why. I'm sure one leg is a lot less stable.
Also some juvenile gulls - I'm not quite sure whether they're Black-backed or Herring.

And recently I saw a juvenile goldfinch on the feeders. C asked me how I knew that was what it was. Well, when I saw one this afternoon and called him to have a look, he knew instantly what it was - even without that distinctive red head the adults have. Taken through a not very clean back window...

One last photo - when I was walking down the road the other day I saw a dead dragonfly - already attracting a lot of wasps and flies, but at least they flew off when I knelt down to take a photo. I suppose it wasn't too far away from the canal, but it was sad to see it just lying there dead on the ground. They're quite big, over two and a half inches long.  I think this is probably a female Common Hawker.

Almost Missing in Action

I thought I'd better post something before August is over! I don't know where it has gone, but it's just zipping by.

With the schools still out (not for much longer) the traffic into town has been so light in the mornings that I've had more time than normal for watching the birds at Heuston Station.
One morning I spotted a black-headed gull with a ring, and I spotted him again the next morning. I was directed to a website to look up all the various ringing projects, and it turns out that he was ringed as a young male last year in Antwerp in the Netherlands. I'm still watching out for him, but except at low tide when the birds are on the mudflats, it's hard to spot the ring.

There is also a one-legged gull: I've spent a lot of time watching over the last few days to make sure, and having watched him take off and land, I am certain that it is that he just has one leg, and not that he prefers to stand on one when he's perched. I'll try to edit and upload a photo of him this week - I have a few in the camera, just haven't looked at them yet.

Favourite cards for July...

I'm surprised to discover I have any gold embossing powder left after the Asian fish one. It's still just a piece of heavy card, in case I decide that I would prefer to turn it into a hanging rather than use it on a card.

Autumn Evenings

The evenings are already noticeably shorter - but it was still bright enough for us to go for a walk in the park after a late dinner this evening, and make the most of a holiday Monday.

Most of the ducks were settling down for the evening, but this heron was fishing (we saw him catch something, too) and a coot and chick did come over to us for some of my bread crumbs. They've already harvested the grass in most of the park, but if the weather stays as it is (warm, sunny, some rain) I can see that they might even be able to cut a second crop of hay; the grass is already quite long in places.

(the bee on the allium is actually from August 2011, in Birr. I couldn't find any suitable header photos from August last year)

Water-lilies

The weather is meant to be cooling down - so hopefully I can get back to editing Greek photos (and selecting ones to print!).
In the meant time, I did say the water-lilies in the Botanic Gardens were quite lovely - here are a few.
I love the names for water lilies, too - nénuphar in French, Nymphaeaceae as the Latin family name, which makes me think of naiads and dryads.

Summer days...

It's still hot and sunny here.
We made time for a quick visit to the Botanic Gardens this morning because there was a patchwork exhibition on which I didn't want to miss. Of course while we were there we had to fit in a short walk around the gardens - along the borders where they plant annuals, down the herbaceous border, around the ponds and back. Plenty of waterlilies in the ponds - photos to follow. I'm not sure that we've ever seen them looking so beautiful before.

This was in a wildflower border:

And the mating dragonflies were down among the waterlilies.

June Cards

Phew - this weather has been fabulous but way too hot to spend much time in my attic, where the temperature has been mostly over 28C.
So not much more photo-editing has been achieved, unfortunately.
Instead, I'm picking out my favourite June cards. Lean pickings, as it was such a busy month between one thing and another.

I've been trying to photograph graffiti around town for an older SCS photo challenge, and this first photo is one I spotted today. I saw the second one a couple of weeks ago - one of the days when my camera was in being cleaned, and I just had C's little pocket camera. But since it was an area of town I don't often walk through, I was glad to have it when I saw the wolf.

I've seen baby robins in the hedge! Have to wait for them to emerge before I can get any photos, though.

Creeping, Crawling

We saw lots of wildlife in Corfu. Yikes, it's now July, and I'm still posting for May! I suppose it's another advantage of going a little earlier in the year before it gets too hot and dry. C was delighted because we saw several live snakes, as opposed to all the dead ones we saw on a previous visit. I couldn't see what the big deal was with the snakes - the tortoises and lizards were far more interesting to me. It was just a shame that when we saw a tortoise making very rapid progress along the road, my memory card was so full that I couldn't take any video footage. We saw at least three different types of lizard - one was in a dark shaded area and the one photo I was able to grab didn't turn out. The little green one was near Sidari, and we saw dozens of them basking in the sun, not paying the slightest attention to all the tourists walking around them. The other one was in the grounds of the little monastery at the top of Mount Pantokrator - the highest mountain on the island (this is a relative term, it's only 906m / 2,972 ft high).

A bird in the bush...

...tree.
I think all my grey wagtail photos so far have been either on the walls along the Liffey or down on the mud flats at low tide.
So it was a rare treat to catch a couple of shots of one perched in a tree this morning.

Last July shows very thin pickings to choose a header photo from. I nearly had to skip back a year to 2011 to find anything, but I found this photo of a young mallard sitting on the canal bank.