Yesterday was a lazy start to the day, thoughts of driving down to Wicklow were banished when I started cleaning the house, yes CLEANING *rolls eyes*. Of all the things to do on paddy's day. I even cleaned our manky kitchen bin. It all started with wiping up a milk spill in the fridge and the process snowballed from there. Nothing to do with the parents staying for the weekend at all, honest.
About 3pm, I did get in a walk, down at the Irish War memorial gardens, which was welcome.
In an attempt to improve my birdsong recognition skills, I stood under all trees listening to bird song, trying to id the bird before looking at it through my bins.
I'm not going to divulge my success rate, anyone could be reading and I'd be reefed off the Countryside bird survey (volunteers still needed, see here for more info and to sign up as a volunteer).
Lots of Goldfinches, Greenfinches, Blue tits, Great Tits, Wrens, Robins, Chaffinches, Starlings, Magpies, Hooded Crows, Jackdaws, Blackbirds, Song thrushes, Mistle thrushes and a very tame Jay in the IWM gardens for you to listen to. A lovely walk down to Chapelizod too along the river Liffey, where you'll see Moorhens, Mallards, two pairs of Mute swans (one pair each end) and a family of Little Grebes near the ucd rowing club buildings. There were also 10 redwings still around.
Actually, one of the pairs of Mute Swnas were making their nest uncomfortably close to where people could cause trouble if they wanted to. Here's hoping their nesting location is successful, it was warming to watch them making their nest. The male pulling twigs from under the river and passing them back to the female for her to intertwine them into the nest. They had that production line process whipped. Later I passed by again and she was sitting on her nest all house proud. I went back home and felt the same. A satisfactory feeling, at least for one day of the year.
