Unidentified specie: (please let me know if you can identify this fly for me by leaving a comment underneath the post.)


Blackberry. Rubus fruticosus





The groundcover of speedwell. Which specie it is I do not know yet. The height of the creeping stems is about 80-100mm. The flowers are between 6 and 8mm.



There are great crops of the berries everywhere. Well they will be in big demand as soon as the snow sets in. (did I hear it right, that this might start as early as next month?



Herb Robert, Geranium robertiatum



I have hardly seen any spiders in my garden, and I am afraid that many were killed by the severe winter we've had. To my surprise and delight, I spotted Garden Spiders everywhere along my route, without searching for their webs. So well done to them; that aspect on its own made my day


Spear Thistle, Cursium vulgare





In the distance is Mount. Gabriel, with the two radar domes on top. making sure that air traffic to and from the Americas don't bump into one another.



Crocosmia



Upright Hedge Parsley, Torillis japonica

Ragged Robin, Lychnis flos cuculi.

Most Ragged Robin flowers were well past their sell-by date, yet they were still very popular by all sorts of insects.
This hoverfly has lovely markings in very strange shapes, not at all like the ones I've seen before. So, if you know who or what it is, please leave a comment at the bottom.

Rhingia campetris


Just now, I came upon this website on hoverflies. Looks very interesting. I'll have a look in the morning because it is now 11pm.



A very late Common Honeysuckle, Lorica periclymenum


Greater Stitchwort, Stellaria holostea


And as you enter the village again, the Prickly Sow Thistle, sonchus asper, greets you again.

Grey Heron. Ardea cinerea

hooded Crow, Corvus cornix

Migrating Butterflies; Red Admiral, Vanessa atalanta, Butterflies

In a Glengarriff Woods I spotted this late Red Admiral, Vanessa atalanta, 7 days ago. It was fuelling up for its long journey south, or was it? Like its Thistle loving cousin, the Painted Lady Butterfly, Vanessa cardui, the Red Admiral is also a migrant species. Scientists and wildlife enthusiasts, however, are still wondering why it is that we do not see a mass migration out of Ireland and UK like the large numbers of Butterflies we saw this spring, coming into these islands. This topic was raised in Autumnwatch too, recently. As a result of the discussions and the scientific research, viewers have been asked to help in leaving a mark on the inter-active map, of where they have seen Autumn Painted Lady Butterflies in the UK, Ireland, Scotland or Wales. There are also charts to mark sightings of the Hummingbird HawkMoth, Macroglossum stellatarum. There have been a great many sightings; on the North European mainland also. This month only two Irish sightings; one in Northern Ireland near Maghera and the other was sighted around Clifden in Connemara in the West of Ireland.

But what of the Red Admiral Butterfly? Although a migrant species from North Africa and the Med, Butterfly Conservation stated that recently the speie has been found overwintering in the south of the UK.
Here in Ireland? I don't know yet. I still have to start looking for an answer to this. I assume many do spend the wintermonths down south, in Ireland too. If you look at the scientific name for the Red Admiral- Vanessa atalanta- it has always been a migratery Butterfly, assuming that atalanta can only really mean, Atlantic?

Red Admiral, Vanessa atalanta
Glengarriff Woods
Glengarriff Woods, County Cork
Glengarriff Woods, County Cork
Last week I spotted the one above in Glengarriff Woods Nature Reserve, and tthe two Butterflies in these pictures I spotted over last weekend, down here at home. A new yapper (small dog) at one of neighbours, kept jumping up at my legs and its yapping/running about meant that the Butterflies got really 'jumpy' and scared of the ***beast. It runs about as a young pup, and I suspect it is. I just get very annoyed with it, everytime I get out of my gate and it starts running in front of my front wheels. I cannot jump onto a road from the path, or the other way around, to avoid this noisemaker,
, County Cork
County Cork
County Cork

Fungi Season02- Coprinus comatus.

The Coprinus comatus, is an odd looking fungi with an even weirder behaviour pattern than most fungi that I know about.
It is also an edible mushroom, something I wasn't aware of when we saw them near Kenmare in County Kerry.
Apparently, this fungi likes the taste of itself so much that it feeds on its own flesh. Well in its own way. In order to make sure that its spores are released further than just below its cap, this mushroom needs to 'curl up' the bottom of its cap, or 'hood'.

It was an easy one to find the name of, with this particular tubular shape. and so I was soon able to get additional information too, which I needed because Sarah had forgotten to bring the fungi guide she had bought her husband. Anyway, this mushroom was a Fungi of the Month at Tom Volk's department of biology in May 2004.


Coprinus comatus.
Also called Lawyer's Wig. .

Apart from being used as food, this fungi had another used to people at one time. When the mushroom digest its cap, it starts to secrete an inky like substance, which has been used for writing. Inky Cap is another name used as well, for that reason. When you look to the dark edge at the bottom, you can see the ink's stains already.

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Autumn; Nature's Skeletons and the onslaught of summer

I did not have much chance yet for enjoying and photographing Autumn's colour. Down here in the South West of the Republic of Ireland, Autumn starts only mid November due to the warm climate.
The other fact is that along the road and along the coastline here, all those leaves, which were only just starting to think about turning, their transformation was disrupted when they met with the enormous force of the gales being brought about by the changing weather conditions. You have to feel sorry for our trees, their rhythms being thrown overboard with flooded summers, leaving no time for their roots to dry out. The extra gales we've had during spring and summer, mean trees being stripped bare with no warning and at a time when the tree is relying on its her leaves with which she can convert the Sun's energy into a chemical used as food for the tree.
You'd have to think then that by the end of summer this same tree is short on energy reserve to face the coming winter.
And just thinking of the harshness the winter's climate will throw at our tree makes you shiver. And then poor tree has to find some energy somewhere too, so she can produce her leaves for spring and next summer.
And then imagine this on a yearly basis! Not just this once.

I have always been struck by the white skeletons in the fields here in winter, and often enough, I tried capturing these in my watercolour paintings and sketches, with either my nails or a small stick trying to scratch these into the washes. Or in the washes of ink if I was painting with black indian ink. one of my favourite mediums. (media?)
Now I am trying to capture it with dear Lady Lumix.




Do you like this one

Or perhaps the -edited version in which the branch is coming more to the front?

I took these a week or so ago, when I had been out shooting the Mosses. Now, with bad weather around us, I have a few minutes to doing them in a post

I was captivated by those 'strange green and overgrown vertical structures which make up the hedgerow in the field below, so

I zoomed in to get a better look at it;

I should have taken a better look at the wobbly little tree, but maybe next tine I'll remember?


My favourite of the lot:
Here, the beautiful white flowers of the Blackthorn will enlightening me sgain next spring:


And this House Sparrow I caught the other day


And this Hooded Crow I spotted along the road.