Birr - Wildlife

I have never seen so many of these butterflies all in one place - Brimstones, I think.
On the agapanthus they had to thrust themselves right up into the flowers to get at the nectar, whereas on the more open flowers they could just land - if you look, you should be able to see the proboscis of the one on the pink flowers. Even in flight when they were coming in to land on those flowers, the proboscis was out and ready - but the photo is blurred.

No dainty butterfly this - that body and legs are positively chunky!

One super-size dragonfly - haven't had time to check out my wildlife book yet. The first time I saw one flit across the lake I thought it was a small bird, and when I finally got to see one at rest after a long time stalking them and waiting, I'd say the body could have been 3 inches long.

He's pretty well camouflaged, but in one part where there was a little swampy stream with reeds and grasses, there were a whole flock of blue tits flitting around. Delightful to watch. (And with any luck, soon C is going to decide to get me a tele-converter for my lens!). I just wish I was better at remembering bird calls - while I was watching them there was something in a bush behind me making a funny almost hissing sound. But while I am good on music and can generally pick out the right chords for a song after hearing it a few times, I just can't get to grips with bird calls.


Swallows on the wire in the car park. When we arrived the lines were full of birds, which C thought were swallows but I thought were swifts or martens. As we were a bit later than we would have liked, he didn't have time to check through his spotting scope, he had to head straight to his meeting. But on comparing the photos I took then with the ones I took when we were leaving, I still maintain the ones in the morning didn't have those long forked tails.

Birr - quick snaps

I am glad I pushed myself a bit to go for the trip to Birr today, it was such a lovely day weatherwise, and lovely to see the gardens coming into their autumn colour.
Top memories with no photos -  the yellow flash of a grey wagtail flying down the river, two ducks swimming through the weeds and snapping at flies, the most ginormous dragonflies I have ever seen - still working on identifying them, the swallows flying over the lake...
Just a couple of photos till I get more sorted out. I gave myself another push and took almost all my photos on manual, and was pleased with how they turned out.

Caught a Fish

Fabulous sunshine, crisp cold mornings...
Hard to believe these are taken within a few minutes of each other - moving angles changed the water from blue to brown.

What was interesting was that it's very obviously a flatfish of some sort that the heron caught, while all the fish I could see were the mullet, which were out in full force again today.  Obviously the Liffey supports a lot more life than I ever thought! I lost the stone from my engagement ring somewhere this morning. I don't even know where, but in the forlorn hope that it might have been when I pulled my camera out this morning, I walked back along the same side of the river. But the only glint of red I saw was a scrap of plastic from a car light.
Off now to pack my camera bag in the hope that tomorrow will be a nice day and I will feel a bit less under the weather, as C has to go to Birr again on business, and I'd like to go back again.

Liffey Swans

Recently I've been seeing a lot more than just the usual pair of swans on the Liffey - anything up to half a dozen. And I don't think that they are cygnets, I don't think they'd be in their adult plumage yet.

I had time after work to stop and take a few photos of these ones gently drifting downstream as they groomed themselves. It amazes me the difference high tide makes - how much nearer it brings them.

I am getting so fed up with Vodafone's broadband service - we're experiencing outages more and more often. This week I decided to start logging them, as I really don't know if we want to persevere till our contract was up. C was pretty fed up this evening when he was trying to listen to something on the radio and all of a sudden it went off air. Maybe if it happens a couple more times he'll be motivated to complain. I noticed that when I emailed about another issue and also asked about opting out because of the bad service, they dealt with the primary issue and studiously ignored the bad service question. Hmmm

Bird Watch

I went out to do something in the garden and this little ball of fluff rocketed up from under the garden bench, where he must have been picking around in all the bits and pieces. I am not sure which of us got the bigger fright. It's just a little sparrow fledgling, but he was so puffed out and fluffy that he looked bigger than the adults.

And look, look - a juvenile robin. You can still see that his red breast hasn't developed totally, it still looks sort of "scaly" under his chin. Now to woo him with mealworms!

Got to look smart for this lady with the camera

I still feel a little bit scruffy

All groomed and looking good

 And help - it's not just the mahonia showing red, we saw quite a few leaves turning already when we were coming through the park today.

Sharing...

I posted a photo the other day of the little blue tit and coal tit happily sharing the nut feeder.
Some sharing insects here...the magnolia was in the Botanic Gardens - I was surprised to see it in bloom at this time of year.

 
The sunflowers are in the garden. The ones growing in a tub are needing a lot of watering in this dry weather, you can see that the petals look a bit wilted!

King - or at least prince, since it's a juvenile gull - of all he surveys.

Sculptures in the Arboretum

I totally forgot about these till I was weeding some dud photos out of my August folder. These were in the Botanic Gardens - only last weekend! There were a few more, but these were my favourites. From a distance the deer looked like wood to me, but C said it was steel, I think. Being under the trees on a sunny day made for somewhat contrasty light, this is the best I could do...It was such a lovely surprise to come across them.

Date and Time

The photo challenge on SCS was Date and Time. I pulled a couple of Paris photos from my archives, but I also
snapped a few when I went into town after work to stock up on coffee.

O'Neill'sBar, Suffolk Street

Ballast House, Aston Quay

Heuston Station (mainline rail station)

And I took the last one in the yard at work this morning.

Bits and Pieces

Lots of activity on the bird front. We have a robin coming, but I don't think it's one of the pair from earlier in the year, and I don't think it's a juvenile either unless it was a very early hatching that has already developed the red breast. I will be working on getting it more used to people. The little baby coal tit, on the other hand, is very unafraid of people, and I often hear his little whistle and see him on the feeder when I am hanging washing out on the line. I also saw a young thrush today...
Two photos of the birds; the little blue tit and coal tit were happy to share and share alike on the feeder, but when the bigger great tit flies in, he takes over and anything else has to wait patiently.

C has been interested for quite some time in origamic architecture, and has made several creations over the last few years. In fact, he's even started work on designing his own template for the Customs House, but that's an ongoing job. Anyway, he was making this one of St. Peter's Basilica for a colleague in work, and he started talking about needing a magnifying lamp. So on Monday I went off looking, and although I spent more than I intended, I bought a light that looks stylish enough to use all the time, and for work purposes you can slot in a magnifying glass and a clamp. I reckoned that if I got one of the ones that you have to clamp to the table it was less likely to get used, because of having to be taken down and put away each time. I can see using this one for embroidery myself, too, so he has to share it with me. This is his finished result, delivered this morning.

Mixed Bag

The WT challenge on SCS this week was to use buttons. It was time to use the most beautiful button Lorraine sent in a package for my birthday. Vintage isn't my normal style, but the button seemed to call for it.

We had guests on Friday night as well as Monday. I couldn't remember how punctual M was, and he's been living abroad for nine years now so I was allowing that they might be delayed by traffic too, so I chose a low-maintenance, delay-tolerant  dinner. Ronald Johnson's Buttermilk Fried Chicken, with baked potatoes, a green salad and a carrot, orange and date salad, followed by Baileys Chocolate Chip icecream, chocolate sauce and meringues. I felt I had to do icecream - when we met up at the BBQ we were at on the Bank Holiday, he was reminiscing to his wife about a kiwi and passionfruit icecream I used to make, back in the days when he was still in college and this was highly exotic. I remember too the first time he invited us round for dinner. He asked was there anything we didn't like, to which C replied he didn't like pasta and he didn't really like chilli con carne (gosh, he's become a lot more tolerant over the years). M said that in one fell swoop that eliminated his student repertoire. I can't actually remember what he did give us - although I seem to recall profiteroles, perhaps.

Buttermilk Fried Chicken (Ronald Johnson, The American Table)
1 chicken jointed into 4 pieces ( I usually buy breast pieces on the bone)
buttermilk
1/4 cup finely chopped parsley
1 small onion, half a carrot, one stick celery, 1 bay leaf
seasoned flour
oil for frying

Cut the tips off the chicken wings and put in a pan with the carcase, neck and giblets. Add water, and the onion, carrot, celery and bay leaf and simmer for at least an hour. Drain and reserve stock.

Marinate the chicken in buttermilk to cover, with the chopped parsley, for several hours or overnight.
Lift the chicken pieces out of the buttermilk and straight away shake in seasoned flour till well covered.
Heat 1/2" vegetable oil over medium-high heat and fry the chicken till golden brown on both sides, two pieces at a time. Place in a ovenproof dish which will contain them all in one layer. Pour the buttermilk in so that it comes about halfway up the chicken pieces.
Cook, uncovered, for 1 1/2 hours at 300F, 150C, till tender and crisp on top. Remove the chicken pieces and keep warm.
Add some of the stock to the buttermilk in the cooking dish, then liquidise till smooth. Return to the heat and cook over medium heat adding more stock as necessary to get the consistency of thick cream.
He suggest serving this with hot biscuits - but I can imagine C turning his nose up at the idea - they are definitely not a European accompaniment to savoury dishes. He would expect them for morning coffee or an afternoon or high tea, not dinner!

I haven't seen the heron on the Liffey for a long time. But on Friday morning it was a very low tide and he was standing on the bank just below James Joyce bridge. Then he flew up river towards Heuston Station. I like these pictures as they are such a different setting to the usual park ones. You can see the seaweed in the first one, when he was on the mud bank at the James Joyce bridge. In the second I like all the ripples, even if they might make it a hard picture to look at if you had a headache! And the third one, although it's not a good exposure because all the light reflecting from a still patch of water made it too contrasty, I really like the arty feel to it with the burnt-out white "frame" round it.