Thank you berry much

A few weeks back I had the pleasure of meeting another fellow birder, Karl Woods, for a day of birding. We decided to go find the large group of waxwings seen in Carrigtwohill. Upon arrival the waxwings seemed to have gathered at the top of a distant tree well out of camera view and I feared that the dull weather might keep me from getting any shots at all.

Luckily the waxwings had other plans and descended on the berry shrubs right next to us. As you can imagine this drastically improved my odds of getting a good shot. They also seemed less shy then the Finbarr’s waxwings (strength in numbers?). One thing I continuously find with waxwings is that when they are close, the weather is bad and when the weather is good the waxwings are always distant. Hence, I never quite get the shot I am after. This is my fifth waxwing shoot this winter, and yet I don’t feel I have done this stunning little bird justice!

I might have considered blurring out the window in the background to emphasize the foreground, but I rather like the landing waxwing in the shot.

Nice to see so many waxwings gathered together.

Finding a cedar waxwing on Cedar road, would have been poetic, don't you think ;)

We finished off the day at Atlantic pond where we saw a ring billed gull, if I’m not mistaking the same one that I had seen earlier at the Gate cinema. Unfortunately I didn’t manage to photograph him (this time). All in all a great day!

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!

Wax on, wax off

With the country slowly filling up from top to bottom with waxwings lately I figured keeping an eye out for this small but colourful songbird might be worth my while. With an appointment to go to Cobh and see the waxwings there the next day with Floss I was content to go about other business. We had an awareness day for our sanctuary in UCC with a couple of reptiles and fudge that we where intending on selling. Halfway there in the taxi we realized we had forgotten the fudge so I volunteered to run back to the house. I backtracked to the house through an estate and heard a squeaking noise I had never heard before. I looked up and came face to face with a single waxwing. Holy crap! The lone bird was as surprised as I was seemingly and flew up to a nearby rooftop. I still got a pretty good shot. Epic!

Next day, we drove to Cobh and found the famous flock of just shy of 20 birds sitting around on a large bush all busily feeding. They where slightly more flighty then I would have expected for what essentially looks like a feeding frenzy, but that didn’t take away from the experience. They love those berries!

Then onto Cuskinny where a gadwall revealed itself right by the bird sign! There where also wigeon and teal in the distance and the usual mallards.

A small army of black headed and common gulls greeted us, especially when a car parked nearby and its occupants threw a large quantity of bread into the water. A ring billed gull soon showed itself too, but alas, no sabine’s gull.

Here is the ring bill, first time I have managed to get a common gull and a ring billed gull in the same shot for comparison. The ring billed gull IS lighter, I’ll be damned!

To top it all off a little egret flew past and gave some nice views in a tree and the usual statuesque great black backed gulls posed down at the piers!

A good morning out all in all with Floss who also has a birding blog which can be found here. http://noobirder.blogspot.com