General greebous

Couple of small updates, after a week of almost constant rain sun has suddenly descended on Cork city and fried its confused citizens to bits. I am thinking of proposing that we rename the Irish maritime climate to an Enigmatine climate due to its severely random nature.

Since I wrote this the weather has turned decidedly average again but I guess that just proves my point.

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Good start for my nature return as the UCC rounds revealed a spotted flycatcher! This seems to be the only flycatcher we have in any great abundance here in Ireland but is by no means easy to find. It’s a summer visitor here and in most of Europe. This picture is not great but fingers crossed that I find some more in the next few weeks. There seems to be a lot of them around the country at the moment so I’m hopeful! 

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The rest of UCC seems largely lifeless with most birds hidden away and recovering from the stress of parenting but one pine tree did reveal an unusual abundance of feeding songbirds. 6 goldcrests, 4 coal tits, 6 blue tits, 7 long tailed tits, 2 great tits and a treecreeper all in one tree. (Treecreeper on top, WOW not my best shot, coal tit bottom, also not great).

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Also made my weekly (ish) trip to the Atlantic pond where I found the usual grey herons but unfortunately no good views of the little egrets. The young heron was showing well again so I had to photograph him despite already having about 20 shots of the same animal (top). Last but not least a little grebe finally wandered into some light and gave me a fairly good shot (bottom), wahay.

 

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Barn swallow and spotted flycatcher added to UCC list

Now lets hope the weather sticks!