Botanic Birds and Beasts

 I'll split the Botanic Gardens into two posts as I have several mandarin duck photos...

As per the title, this one is (mostly) birds. 

A snatched shot of the squirrel. From the sound in the bushes we had thought it was a bird, but I think it was the squirrel taking a flying leap to grab a berry from the tree. 

I'll be back with May Favourites tomorrow, and then the flowers from the Botanic Gardens.

The full album can be found here. 

Along the coast

 I recently had to go for my annual medical check-up for work, and this time I made an afternoon appointment for after work. Knowing that I would have a little spare time I tucked my camera into my bag, and took a few photos on the way.

First up was the changed decor on this utility box - last year it displayed a Viking cycling along, a sheep looking through a porthole and the Pigeon Chimneys (as blogged here). This year it was totally different.

Shortly after that, you reach yacht club land, so I spotted this sign.

After that I reached Bull Island, a bird reserve and two golf links.  I cycled out to it along the second causeway, so between the two I spotted a couple of egrets and some shelduck.

As it was fairly overcast I didn't great photos on the reserve, but here are a couple. It was certainly lovely to feel sand beneath my feet and smell the tang of salt air. 

On the way back I spotted some more utility box art. I'm afraid the close-up didn't turn out well, and I can't remember if at that stage I was just using my phone because I needed to get home and get dinner cooked before going out again...I'm thinking it was just my phone at this stage. In any case, I also took a long shot to depict the setting, because just beyond the road is St. Anne's Park, and in fact there was a heron in the little pond/lake.

Since Saturday was a beautiful sunny morning with blue skies, and we were both awake early, we took a trip to the Botanic Gardens and I'll be along shortly with a recap of that. We were delighted to see a mandarin duck (they've been gone from the park for several years now) and a little grebe, plus a swan family with very young cygnets. 

Paris in brief

 A few Paris photos. There is a full album available here.

Unfortunately I came down with a cold the day after we arrived, so I was not feeling the best. And the weather is probably the worst we have ever experienced in April. Friday afternoon was beautifully warm and sunny, we enjoyed sitting by the pond in the centre of the Luxembourg Gardens. Saturday morning was so wet in the Jardin des Plantes that I never took my camera out - and we realised that even for a short visit, two pairs of jeans would have been a good idea!

Mostly we walked and wandered, so here I'm just going to post no more than a dozen of my favourite photos. 

It was raining on Sunday morning when we went up to the Arc de Triomphe. (In the album, you will see a couple of architectural models from when it was first proposed. There is a model of the first suggestion, and then a reproduction of the final version which is much less fussy. We spent the last afternoon, after we had checked out, visiting an exhibition on the restoration of Notre-Dame in the architecture and heritage museum (https://www.citedelarchitecture.fr/en). There were some really interesting videos interviewing some of the different craftspeople involved in the restoration. 

Montmartre

The rooster from the cathedral spire

Near le Gare du Nord

the city, seen from Montmartre

façade of the Dior building on the Champs Elysees
 

I loved this octopus on the oceanographic institute, but it was hard to get a good photo

along the Seine

Notre-Dame

April Favourites

 I should be along in a few days with photos from our trip to Paris.

In the meantime, here are my favourite cards from April, along with a wistaria header photo taken in Farmleigh last May.

Farmleigh - photo heavy

 After a dearth of photos all year, I finally have some. We were awake fairly early on Saturday, and while the weather wasn't as beautiful as Friday, it was still quite sunny and we decided to head to Farmleigh. The biggest treat was seeing some little grebes - we couldn't work out if there were two or three because they swim underwater for such distances. Hard to get a good photo because of their smallness and speed, but I did manage a couple. There were plenty of tufted ducks and coots, a couple of moorhens and of course mallards. The photo of the mallard was a fun one, because the water was so still and clear that we could see his feet paddling away as he moved along.

Apart from that, the photos are Spring flowers, a ladybird C spotted on a dead leaf on an echium, and my new jumper, hot off the needles. I used a voucher from my brother to buy a new book of Aran patterns, and a gift cert from work to (mostly) buy the wool, which is merino with 5% silk and 5% cashmere, and has a lovely feel. It's not actually Aran (worsted/sport) weight, it's double knitting so it's not as heavy and I'll probably get more use out of it. 

Cowslip

The early thrush catching the worms - and maybe a caterpillar