Birder's Eye View

Wednesday, March 31, 2010

Northern Ireland

As promised, here are the rest of my Irish birds from my recent backpacking trip. It occurred to me as I was uploading these that they were all taken in the same place -- at Colin Glen Forest Park. I did see many of these birds in other place, but I happened to photograph them all in the same place. The park, by the way, was excellent for birding!

Grey Wagtail. I was super excited to find this one -- it was foraging around in the fast-moving water for the longest time. Very cool bird!

Chaffinch. These were fairly common, although not easy to photograph. Neat looking little birds though.

Coal Tit. This was the only one of its kind I saw (or was able to ID at least!). More common were Great Tits and Blue Tits.

Wood Pigeon. These were *everywhere* and quite annoying too. Everytime I thought I saw a new bird, it was another Wood Pigeon...

Song Thrush. This bird offered us a great view, as it sat alone on a branch happily singing along to itself.

Not as many new birds in Northern Ireland as there were in the Republic, but it was a fun trip anyhow. Both countries were absolutely gorgeous, very friendly, and provided an overall totally amazing experience.

Now as spring is finally moving in to the UK I'll hopefully start seeing more things around London. I'll be visiting a few parks over the next few days, and in a few weeks if all goes as planned I'll be headed up into the mountains of Wales for some spring break backpacking.

Until next time,

Happy birding!

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Friday, March 26, 2010

Republic of Ireland

I am terribly overdue for another blog post. My only excuse for my long hiatus is that I have been off on random adventures around Europe. The latest of these adventures consisted of backpacking around Ireland for a week, where I picked up some fantastic birds. So many, in fact, I've broken it into 2 blog posts -- one for the Republic of Ireland, and one for Northern Ireland where I spent 4 days each.

If you want to read about the trip itself, check out my other blog. But since I'm lazy and it's late here, for now I'm just going to post pictures and a few captions of some of the birds I saw in the first 4 days of my trip.

Tufted Duck, St. Stephen's Green

Mallard, St. Stephen's Green

Mute Swan, St. Stephen's Green


Blue Tits, St. Stephen's Green

Robin, Merrion Square

Hooded Crow, Phoenix Park

Long-tailed Tit, Merrion Square

Coal Tit, Merrion Square


Redshank, Howth

Brent Goose, Howth

Guillemots and various gulls, Howth

Greater Black-backed Gulls, Howth

If I have more time later, I may try to post more commentary, but for now the photos will have to suffice. And this time I will try very hard not to take a month and a half before my next update!

Cheers from London and happy birding!

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