Nature photos

[Del.Monte]

Wood Pigeon doesn't seem too concerned!

[isha]

My husband (an adult) sends the children (also adults) daily... and I mean DAILY... updates on the family messenger group about the poppies. The infestation of these albeit beautiful flowers happened long ago when a friendly hippie gave us one. One has become thousands, and those that escape my weeding are obsessed over and mollycoddled by himself as if they are his pets. What is he like! This is today's update and apparently there are three now in bloom. Yippee

He also gives biweekly frog updates with photos of almost invisible frogs. See below from an earlier this week family update

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[CelticRambler]

He also gives biweekly frog updates with photos of almost invisible frogs. See below from an earlier this week family update

I wanna be like him when I grow up.

[765489]

Proper meadows. Good mix of native grasses, flowers and nitrogen fixing legumes and clover. Teeming with birds, bees and insects. I could literally spend hours mopin about this type of habitat.

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[765489]

Yellow Shell Moth

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[isha]

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Micky o Mouse on my walk today..or is it Séanie o Shrew. Very recklessly tame.

[765489]

Cock Pheasant. Proud as punch.

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[765489]

More pheasants and a rabbit.

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[Del.Monte]

I love pheasants in the wild and on the plate.

Cheating again as I still haven't got around to buying a decent camera - this is a painting by the late William Huston that I picked up for a few pounds a couple of years ago. It's a massivet 20" x 30" oil on canvas - I like it anyway.

[765489]

I love pheasants in the wild and on the plate.

All the pheasants locally at the moment are overwintered from stock released by the local gun club last year. There's are a large amount of young pheasant chicks around that bred naturally this year. When I'm driving through corn field tram lines I am on a constant lookout for them running across and up the tram lines. I've never seen so many in a long time.

These birds will have a bit more sense evading foxes than the few hundred that will be released shortly that will mostly end up in the mouths of the foxes.

The meat would be nicer from the overwintered bird.

[Del.Monte]

Another cheat I'm afraid - this superb oil painting of a Woodcock by Canadian artist, Stephen Burgess, sold for €1,200 at Morgan O'Driscoll's online art auction last night. Out of my price league, one can but dream.

[765489]

I found a dead woodcock earlier this year. Lovely markings on them. I usually only see them from a distance. Not sure what killed it.

[isha]

Ah for goodness sake, this little small baby rabbit just now in one of the potato patches, hardly bothered to run away. Makes me worry when animals are that tame, that they might be sick.

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[765489]

Looks healthy enough from the photos. I've alot of rabbits about the place and some of them are just used to me now. Like the hares up in Dublin Airport.

I dug the following three photos out of my phone that were taken around 2013. A black rabbit appeared on the scene that was very tame. He used to wait outside the door for his daily slice of bread. I'm not sure if he was a mutant rabbit ( there's another black rabbit out in the field as I type this ) or he escaped from a neighbour.

Eating a slice of bread

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Waiting outside the door with a neighbours dog

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Chilling out while the other rabbits eat pinhead porridge left out fir the birds

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Eventually the rabbit population grew to over 40 rabbits, they were everywhere. Mixy got them all in the end.

[765489]

No photos as they are up too high, but there was three peregrine falcons over my head just now. One must be the juvenile ? Noisy and were being mobbed by swifts.

[765489]

A small tortoiseshell catching some rays on a fence post. Looks like its been in the wars.

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[isha]

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He is not a rabbit. He is a hare. A leveret named Maxwell who is fully at home now, every evening in among the potatoes and practices his sprints on the patio every morning.

[765489]

Beautiful animal Isha. No hares around here bar up in the airport. Great to have them in your garden.

[765489]

No photos as they are up too high, but there was three peregrine falcons over my head just now. One must be the juvenile ? Noisy and were being mobbed by swifts.

Just an update but there was six today. I take it it is the two parents and the four juveniles?

[isha]

She just hangs out, not too close but never too far. Has gotten incredibly good at sprinting, you'd gasp at how fast she runs now. I say she because I begin to think she is a lady hare as she practices boxing. People think only males do that but it's much more likely to be a female. So cute when she is doing her practice moves, like a little kid trying to do adult things.


Yes, my garden is a messy jungle!

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[CelticRambler]

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If I hadn't been strimming at the time, I might (only might) have had a camera close enough to take a picture of a fire salamander this afternoon. They're an occasional find around here, but this one was in a fairly dry part of the garden so I don't know what he/she was doing there.

As happens rather too often, I "found" it with the strimmer, all of a sudden, but I don't think I injured it (much), as I moved it away into a patch of longer grass that I was leaving alone, and very soon afterwards there was no sign of it.

It's one of the beasties on my "Big Five" photo list - in almost twenty years, I've never been able to get a picture of one.

[Del.Monte]

Lovely warm morning in Enniscorthy and a walk by the river produced a large variety of bird and other species. Sorry for the dire photos (I really will have to kit myself properly soon), in any event seeing the seven large cygnets did my heart good to see. The parents of this particular brood have been very successful over the years and seem to lose few if any of their offspring to the many predators on the river.

A surprise, an unavoidable encounter took place with a rare and infrequently seen species - the Ivan Yates (ex.TD and Newstalk presenter) - hands shaken, pleasantries exchanged and I consider the hatchet well and truly buried. I have known the poor man since 1967 so we have history. No selfie stick so no pictures!

[CelticRambler]

Not entirely sure what I was seeing, but there were four of them enjoying my new bullrush plantations and in no apparent hurry to move:



I think it's a grasshopper's late nymph stage, with diddy little wings and antennae.


Or could these be the empty shells of an adult that's already metamorphosed and gone off to scratch his legs in the grass?




Someone else was also enjoying the view, no doubt with far more "culinary" intentions!

[Del.Monte]

Rather froggie than me although some would have you believe that eating insects is the future - blue bottle toasties anybody?

[765489]

Rather froggie than me although some would have you believe that eating insects is the future - blue bottle toasties anybody?

Blue bottle toasties and a pint of chandlers, can't beat it after a hangover.