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!

The squirrel occupation

My trip to Phoenix Park and Dublin zoo last week didn’t turn up too many wild creatures in the 4 hours or so I spend wandering around and avoiding random and extreme rain showers. None the less it was great fun because it’s almost impossible to avoid one of Ireland’s most prosperous invasive species; the grey squirrel. These small grey and quite unwary creatures are simply everywhere going about their daily routines and can be quite easy to photograph.

As is well known the grey squirrel originates from America as its Latin name suggests (Sciurus carolinienis) and was (allegedly) accidently introduced when a rather ill thought out wedding present of little squirrels ran amuck back in 1911. Since then the grey squirrel has pushed out the smaller, less adaptable red squirrels from most of its range and gained a permanent foothold in the food chain.  (top, red s from little island, bottom, grey s from Phoenix park)

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Luckily the problem doesn’t seem so bad down here in Cork where sighting a squirrel of any sort is a fairly rare occurrence for me. Oddly little island seems to have both species but not in any great abundance.  

Still, despite its influence and bad reputation the grey squirrel is admittedly a great looking little creature and very photogenic!

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The zoo has some rather tame wild birds as well, magpies, jackdaws, rooks, collared doves, herring gulls, starlings, house sparrows, robins, dunnocks, grey herons, mallards and even a little grebe where quite approachable, more so even then the ones in Cork city. (from top to bottom, little grebe, house sparrow, juvenile starling, jackdaw, collared dove, magpie)

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As for the zoo creatures themselves, they too got their pictures taken; I even made them a special page which can be found on the right under sub pages or by clicking on the tiger below!