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.