Singing birds

Well, since it’s now officially summer (despite appearances in the weather) the city is full of song birds tending to their families. Nothing out of the ordinary naturally, but that makes them no less photogenic.

Robins, if there’s no robins around the city, chances are, there’s been a cloud of lethal gas released in Cork and you should get out of town rather quickly. Just in case that statement is too confusing, that means that there’s a lot of them.

Pied wagtails, another constant companion, though it can be hard to get them to sit still when they are foraging for insects on the ground, (or whatever it is that they are doing).

Linnets, small finches, didn’t get particularly close but noteworthy to see them in the city centre. The male

Female linnet

A greenfinch on my feeder, one of the few visitors photographs that wasn’t entirely white washed as a result of taking the pictures through glass.

A dunnock. At this point I have a couple of alright shots of these birds, but I’m just never satisfied. My quest for the perfect dunnock picture continues.

Mistle trushes. Currently quite common around the city to my delight. Just can’t get enough of these large greyish trushes which respond to your presence by uttering an alarm call that sounds like a machine gun. A walk through Phoenix park in Dublin yesterday revealed dozens of these birds too, seemingly in every second tree.

One of the hooded crows at the Atlantic pond, I’m always delighted to see these birds which don’t seem to stray all that far from the pond and its nearby trees.

Fulmars and such

Bit more backlog from the past few months. Quite like the background on the feral dove, had a nice day out with the fulmars on the old head of Kinsale, godwits in little island starting to show summer plumage and herons around the city.

Fulmar

Too fast to focus on, a few lucky shots

Godwits on a rainy day

Wood pigeon

Feral pigeon

Grey heron joining in on a gull flock

Little egret eating prawns outside my house

A mallard being a mallard

The gullmination of spring

As part of my massive backlog of late winter an early spring pictures I thought I’d get it over with and give you the remainder of my gull pictures. I particularly enjoyed the encounter with 2 ring billed gulls at Atlantic pond on March 1. One of these had changed into its brilliant white summer plumage, where the streaking on its head had entirely disappeared. Unfortunately this ‘tuxedo’d’ gull only landed for about ten seconds so they aren’t my best ring billed shots. See if you can tell the two ring bills apart ;)

My attempts to capture summer plumage black headed gulls before their departure from the city.

Guess this common gull might be trying to go for the summer look too.

Some great black backed gulls not too long ago in Kinsale. A great spot for them, at all ages. I’d imagine that this place may be the best spot for me to get the hang of aging great black backed gulls and herring gulls.

Rather liked this adult herring gull and a non adult herring (I think).

Not the most exciting post maybe, but it’s a little hard to take pictures lately as rain seems to be a near constant right now.