Birds springing to life

As winter came to a close I decided to try get some shots of the birds out and about preparing for nesting. What I really wanted was some good song trush shots. Another species I regularly see but whose photographs rarely seem to work out. I guess because it’s hard to get to their eye level and because they tend to be in shadowy parts. Anyway, here’s some early attempts at finding some of the more common species of songbird in the city at the moment.

Hooded crow

Little magpies. There was five of them fighting on the ground. 

Starlings in a field, showing the yellow bill colour that they develop for the breeding season

Always nice to see the various colours hidden in the starlings plumage

House sparrow

A female chaffinch which decided to pose for the camera

Long tailed tit. Frustrating bird to photograph as it sits still for only a few seconds. Some day I'll actually get a good shot of one!

Needs no introduction. Robin patrolling UCC

Same bird

One very nervous blackbird in UCC

Some song trush shots

Easily overlooked. Personally I like all the patterns in the plumage

A single redwing trush in the city. Hardly a sign of spring, but since I have 2 other turdus trushes in this post, I figured, why not.

Beauty and the beasts

Seems I haven’t posted since December 2012. Well it’s not for lack of birds or photographs but probably the fact that I’ve been too busy working my way through my ever present backlog of photos.

I’ve seen a number of waxwings since the Cobh flock in December. Most are part of a group found at St.Finbarr’s cathedral a few weeks back. It’s a great location even allowing the occasional eye level shot with distant background, exactly what you want from a songbird. The only downside is that the weather generally has forced me to compromise a fair bit of quality. Here’s the best of a rather grainy lot.

Just to prove that there where in fact multiple waxwings ;)

Also checked some of the other sites around the city, Atlantic pond, Lough and the canals, but despite the Iceland gulls and the ring necked duck that where present this time last year; all that turned up was a couple of ring billed gulls.

In other news, I went for a trip to Kinsale last week. I was hoping to photograph great black backed gulls, as they tend to be a bit shy and harder to photograph then other Larus species. I found none! But the rare day of sunshine did allow me to photograph some crow species in full light. I do love the colours that a rook can reveal on a sunny day!

Jackdaw, love the eye colour

Hooded crow

Rook

Young rook

Rook finds some bread, displeased gulls!

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.

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