Weird pigeon

What the heck is that!? Was my thought as I passed a car with an odd looking pigeon sitting on it whilst on my way into town a couple of months back. This odd individual had me confused for a moment as it didn’t look like any of our regular Columba pigeons. Turns out it was just a young woodpigeon, a really odd looking bird considering how different it looks to the adult. The massive iris/stoned look gives it away as the older ones have that going on too.

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

Your garden variety birds

We put up a bird feeder in the garden, set up so I can point and shoot through the window of the kitchen for rainy or study filled days. The lack of nearby cover seems to be discouraging some birds but I’m getting sporadic groups of blue tit / chaffinch. So far I have blue tit, great tit, greenfinch, chaffinch, blackbird, jackdaw, magpie, rook, collared dove, woodpigeon  & song trush. Not too shabby!

I’ll be keeping tab of what shows up anywhere in the garden, in this page here, which can also be found to the right under sub pages (over there -> )

Here’s some past shots I have gotten of these individuals.

Collared dove

Blue tit

Great tit

Greenfinch

Chaffinch

Song trush

Blackbird

Residents and seasonal regulars

As I haven’t much time to compose a post today because of heavy study I thought I’d throw up some shots of the everyday birds that are almost unavoidable anywhere in the city. The commonest of birds vary at different times of year but many stay around all year. 

First then are the pigeons; three species can commonly be found in the city, the domestic rock pigeon (picture at top of post), the woodpigeon (below) and the collared dove (bottom).  All three are relatively easy to spot with the domestic pigeons preferring concrete environments and the Peace Park, the woodpigeon present at almost every grassland and tree location and the collared doves wandering randomly from tree to tree.

In summer the air is alive with the chatter of barn swallows (left), these small but extremely fast songbirds can be very entertaining to watch, though a bit of a nightmare to photograph! The closely related house martin and sand martin can also be seen around the Lee canals but is less common. Swifts, another aerodynamic insectivore can also be seen up in the sky but actually isn’t related at all, their wings are more sickle shaped then swallows. 

In winter when the swallows and swifts have migrated away they are replaced by vast flocks of black headed gulls (top) which are joined by common gulls (bottom). Both of these species can be quite approachable and can be lured over by food offerings to within inches especially in places like the Lough and the North Mall canal!

Slightly less common are lesser black backed gulls (below) and herring gulls, these gulls are somewhat shyer then black headed gulls but can none the less often be approached.

See you next time!

Also thank you to http://drimnaghbirdwatch.blogspot.com for adding a link back to my blog, its much apreciated!