Gubu.ie

Beautiful Senja, Norway

Devils Teeth (Tungeneset) Norway

Gotcha!

This lady has been driving me nuts for the last month. I knew she was in the pond, and by the sound of the splash she made I knew she was a hefty lass, but despite all my creeping and crawling, I couldn't ever catch sight of her before she spotted me and dove into the depths ... until yesterday!



And I knew she had a little someone keeping her company in that pond, too (quite possibly one of her own offspring) - and I managed to catch sight of him or her aswell:



The green lads seem to have all fecked off for the winter now ... unless they've been eaten!

Migrating cranes



Not sure what's going on this year. I'm keeping an eye on the tracker site, and it's been showing huge numbers heading my way on and off over the last month (mostly "off" while the winds were blowing so strongly from the south). But I'm neither seeing nor hearing them, despite being outside all day long, and not wearing hearing protection either. And then the tracker site shows that they passed over and are well on their way down to Spain ...

Perhaps those same high winds are carrying their cries off into the distance and I'm missing out on that cue to look up.

Ånderdalen National Park Senja, Norway

In spite of my pinched nerve and the land being more water-logged than I have seen it in a long time I did manage a walk over the hill and through a place I sometimes visit where there are mysterious boulders, and erratics. The whole place is surrounded by a low wall which has loads of purposely made fairy doors in it. Most are properly made with little lintels, but the one shown here is a little triangular one. I love fairy doors - real ones, not those yokes that are pretending.

Lovely colour Isha.

Looks like someone's brain growing out of this silage bale but is a fungus called Schizophyllum commune from what I can see see on Google.

I've been doing some long hill walks recently. Today I nearly lost the path on one boggy trek I hadn't done before but the Three Wise Sheep showed me the way.

The other pic is a moody shot from yesterday of those weird nest things and straggly trees, that looks like capillaries in the body.

Janey ... it works!



A quick bit of messing about with the new photo software. On my icy walk a couple of weekends ago, I came across two lads photographing "something" with long lenses (the kind you leave in the camper because they're too friggin heavy to be lugging up a cliff ). I waited just long enough to see the vague outline of what I knew to be a chamois (or shammy, as the leather fetishers call them) munching his way up the slope in the icy fog. The phone definitely couldn't cope with that kind of challenge, so I dug out the proper camera, took a couple of shots and went on my way. Reviewing them later, they looked to be pretty useless - other than the grass in the foreground, all white with a few hints of pale grey.

And yet ... the camera could, in fact, see a lot more than me, and a very quick zap with the new software revealed a lot more than I thought.

This lad will be one of the descendents of a herd that was given by some hunter-conservationists to their French counterparts after WW2 as a thank-you gift for not wreaking revengeful havoc on the Black Forest (the Alsation hunters were given custody of the Schwartzwald during the reconstruction period).

isha wrote: ↑Thu Dec 01, 2022 3:36 pm received_460896325977952.jpeg

Do you know what type of birds these are Isha ? Were they white as in Egrets or something else ?

Swans was what I presumed they were. Could be wrong. They were white. Could be geese I suppose.

isha wrote: ↑Thu Dec 01, 2022 8:29 pm Swans was what I presumed they were. Could be wrong. They were white. Could be geese I suppose.

I'm a dope, was thinking their necks were legs yup your right bosco.

KHD wrote: ↑Thu Dec 01, 2022 8:34 pm I'm a dope, was thinking their necks were legs yup your right bosco.

They look mostly like calligraphy squiggles.

isha wrote: ↑Thu Dec 01, 2022 8:29 pm Swans was what I presumed they were. Could be wrong. They were white. Could be geese I suppose.

At your latitude, my first thought was geese (of the Edit: Canada variety).

Full moon out tonight. The photos I take never do it justice.

KHD wrote: ↑Thu Dec 08, 2022 4:46 pm Full moon out tonight. The photos I take never do it justice.

You're not alone. Good lunar photography is one of the most challenging challenges, not least because the damn thing moves a lot faster than you might imagine.

Pine marten we watched for half an hour last night. He didn't seem to notice a whole bunch of us with our noses to the window. So cute

Three friends from yesterday.

Not mine and from a long, long time ago - 1950's postcard - but worth posting.

Not exactly a photo, but worth looking at all the same. Either the stuff of dreams ... or nightmares!



This was the departure of a huge number of cranes from northern Spain a couple of weeks ago - about 50-80000 in one extended wave, after they'd been held up in their migration by unfavourable weather. This is just after they've taken flight, so it's all a bit chaotic, but you can see towards the end how groups are beginning to settle into the classic V-shaped formation for long-distance flying.

Several thousand of these same birds would have flown over my house later that day, overnight and/or early the next day ... but I was flying to Ireland myself at the time so wasn't there to see them.

The video doesn't really do justice to the sight and sound of such a flight. These are big ceatures - about 5kg apiece - and loud; I can usually hear them coming when they're still about 2-5km away (depending on the wind), and they talk to each other all the time. When they pass overhead at a low-ish level, you can even hear the beating of their wings.

The boys are back in town!



And the girl (though she must be a granny by now ... )

Ooooookayyyyy ...