Heronics

Lots of herons around at the moment. Including one very tame one in the park. Presumably the same bird that I have seen small children chasing in the past. It seems to be perfectly contend with just strolling away at a leisurely pace rather then flying away.

By the way I should mention. The spam blocker on blogger seems to be working less effectively then it used to. Hence some of the comments are getting through. Don’t click on the links whatever you do! You’ll recognize these comments by the bizarre phrasing

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

Flycatching treenagers

Blue tit youngling

Yup, so I’m back in the city once again enjoying the bird drought. Not that I am complaining because I did manage to find some of my favourite common songbirds and photograph them at least slightly better than past efforts. My tip of the week I guess is that like the wrens before, treecreepers have now erupted from their nests and are more approachable and easier to view then the adults usually are. I’ve seen about twelve in all in different places around the city. 

First tree? He'll never forget that

Thought I would point my camera at this chaffinch after I so rudely scared him away from the seed he was eating. One of our most colourful birds and thankfully one of our most common as well

 

Whilst doing my usual UCC rounds I was surprised to realize I was staring right down at a fledged spotted flycatcher (I was hoping for a coal tit), in fact it was staring right up at me and almost made for quite a good photo series, unfortunately it was largely obscured by foliage which slightly ruined the shots. Then again, it kind of personifies the spotted flycatcher as the somewhat private bird it is. The place I was viewing was from the staff car park which in fact overlooks the river areas of UCC. This spot always gives me a rarely found top down view as well as allowing me to see some of the canopy birds at eye level.

This would have been a rare and special moment & I guess it was, just not for my camera!

Calling for food, love the fact that it appears to have whiskers

To my astonishment I also had two warblers wander straight into the branches I was looking at, they look a bit willowish to me and since I didn’t get a good shot that reveals its leg colour i’m not sure which it is (chiffchaff or willow warbler). I’m not going to pin it down to one because admittedly I usually get these two wrong. (Dark legs means chiffchaff, but not always, doh!). At least we can safely conclude it’s not a wood warbler!

Must say, haven’t seen anything new this week but I am delighted to have gotten at least some sort of mentionable shot of a warbler this summer. I was almost ready to conclude that my luck was going to be even worse than last year in photographing one.

By the way, something of a weird sighting, the mid city fountain (which I know contains no fish) had about five adult herons peering into it at 2am the last day. Where they drinking, I’m not sure whether they drink or get their moisture in take from their prey, also, why the fountain and not the water that runs through much of the city, perhaps it’s too brackish in the canals, they certainly weren’t planning on roosting there being surrounded by hundreds of drunken folks, what the heck?

It really 'bugs' me...

...when I can't find any birds

The past week or so has turned up very little in the form of city birds. Don’t get me wrong, they haven’t all fallen from the skies or anything, it’s just that generally there is nothing out of the ordinary going on. There are still a couple of flycatchers around and my ever present friends the blackbirds and robins are still busy distracting me but there is nothing out of the ordinary. I had hoped to get some shots of Blackcaps, Chiffchaffs, willow warblers, barn swallows, sand martins, grey wagtails and various other small and brown birds but have found pretty much nothing.


(some dodgy shots of the old familiars)

A drying cormorant

Grey wagtail taking a walk on a pipe

A hooded crow still being harrased by its child

Eventually I decided to spend a day down in Blarney looking to photograph the reed buntings and blackcaps that live alongside the small lake there. Again, nothing but glimpses and silhouette shots. In the end I decided to focus my energies on chasing some of the local butterflies, damselflies and dragonflies with some interesting results. I must say that the disappointment of not finding many birds was quickly offset by the pleasure of observing these lovely insects. The four spotted chaser in particular was a pleasure to watch, it’s a rather massive insect that flits across the lake surface with lightning speed whilst grabbing smaller insects with great precision. The much smaller damselflies too are deadly hunters in their own right as the picture of the common blue damselfly on the right proves!

So without further ado I present some of the members of the rather large Odonata family. The damselflies in particular are rather hard to tell apart and there is a good chance I misidentified one or two of them. A thanks to Mothman at boards.ie for helping to ID them.

Most likely a female freshly emerged Ruddy Darter (Sympetrum sanguineum)

The mentioned four spotted chaser (Libellula quadrimaculata), the pic doesn't do him justice but its so fast that I was lucky to get this shot!

A Rufescens form Blue tailed damselfly (Ischnura elegans)

A regular blue tailed damselfly (Ischnura elegans)

Azure damselfly (Coenagrion puella)

Common blue damselfly (Enallagma cyathigerum)

Not too sure what this is (I forgot to get it ID'd) if anyone knows please do let me know

Not a bad haul right! It definitely made my day; still, tomorrow it would be nice to find something with feathers. Later.

A beaten up looking robin, poor little guy

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!

In Otter news

I’ll be honest, of the 55 or so species (you better be right Wikipedia!) of mammal in Ireland I have seen maybe ten and only managed to photograph a couple. Here in the city, as you might imagine, we are a little short on creatures such as Sika deer and Pine marten so finding these species on my limited time and transport is near impossible (bring on the Summer). 

 Go a little more coastal or rural though and you have a significant chance of finding Otters. These large Mustelids are one of the least hated animals in Ireland at the moment, their playful and inquisitive nature endear most of the people that they share ground with and aside from that they feed primarily in fish, a habit that keeps them generally out of human conflict. Heck maybe it’s just the fact that they are rather entertaining! Just look at the video below (not mine, random vid, hope they don’t mind the embed).

To find otters, estuarine areas are probably easiest. My preferred area is Clonakilty bay where I have spent extensive time exploring and encountered otters nine times. Not bad considering I wasn’t looking for or expecting to find them. Otters live inland too but apparently are shyer, I think maybe this has something to do with coastal otters being well used to flocks of large and aggressive gulls circling and mobbing them for fish. Once you’ve had a great black backed gull (wingspan 1.7m) lunge at you you’re probably not going to be afraid of a long haired dude with a camera.

Here in Ireland we are quite lucky because we apparently have one of the highest concentrations of common otter anywhere in Europe, a pretty awesome statistic if you consider that we usually have the lowest concentration of or completest lack of most European species! 

Early mornings are the best time to find otters, they like the peace and quiet of not having too many people around I guess! The mentioned gull mobbing are also a handy way of finding them since these large birds circle the poor otter and can be seen from quite a distance, a gang of gulls is always worth investigating. The oddest thing about these guys seems to be that once you do spot them they usually start watching you right back instead of running off. This mother and littleuns is the perfect example. She was unaware of my presence at first, but after she noticed me she just watched me for about five minutes before strolling off. An encounter that made my day!

I am not sure if we have otters here in the city but I am guessing that the answer is yes, the area of waterlogged fields and ponds across from the Lee river fields seems ideal; if it’s quiet enough to have kingfishers then I am sure otters exist too. Further research to come!

In other news! Nothing new in the past few days but I did get some interesting shots of the ‘everyday’ birds.
Also, added a page for the UCC bird list (Here) or on the Sub-page toolbar to the right!

My favorite Pied wagtail shot to date!

Some experimental closeups of the Grey heron. Monsters of the water, I actually saw one eat a baby duck yesterday

Mute swan.

Greenfinch, my best shot to date but I'm still not happy with it!

A hooded crow at UCC, looking a bit grumpy!

A Dunnock (?) I think its a dunnock but it looks odd somehow, I'm guessing its newly fledged!