Silent Sunday

White tailed bumblebee

Lens Artist Photo Challege # 8 Colorful

In Ireland, street festivals have almost become the norm in the summer. It’s a way for small towns and villages to increase numbers of tourists to their local area and they can be often be very colourful.

Sweet stall Tubbercurry Fair

Street festivals are a way of celebrating what those communities have to offer. Some examples here in Mayo there is the Ballina Salmon Festival and the Foxford Riverfest, Swinford has the Síamsa Sráide, a celebration of transitional music and song, and lots more throughout the country.

 

standing tall

This year, we have the opportunity to visit Tubbercurry Old Fair. The old fair day was a tradition in Irish towns. People from rural areas would go into towns on these days (usually one day in a month) and buy what they needed. Cows and livestock would be brought to the fair to be sold and so on.

The Tubbercurry fair day festival tries to recreate this event – but along with all the things that would have been on a traditional fair day there are all the new things too. Today, the fair gives an opportunity for gifted crafts men and women to display their wares as well as given demonstrations of their talents.

 

straw house for laying hens

Wooden wheel

Willow basket

 

 

 

 

 

Wednesday Harvest

 

harvest

Botanising

Last week I was very lucky to spend a day with the BSBI (Botanical Society of Britain and Ireland) during their Mayo recording event. The botanists had spent 4 days in County Mayo, recording plants on Clare Island, Inishturk as well as on the mainland.

This is the second BSBI recording event I have attended and I am always impressed, not only by the knowledge of the botanists doing the recording, but also by their enthusiasm to pass on their knowledge to amateur botanists like myself. In Ireland, we have about 980 native vascular plants and a further 1300+ non-natives.  The last time the recording event was held in Mayo back in 2015, a whopping 10,824 plant records were collected. All this information will go to feed into the BSBI Plant Atlas 2020.

On the day I attended, the group was broken up into a number of smaller groups of about 4 individuals, each with a specific area to survey. Each group had a mix of botany skills, from experts to beginners. Our group started recording in some flora rich grasslands along the shores of Lough Carra.

Flora rich grassland

Botanising often requires that you get up close and personnel to your subject matter,  particularly if it is something rare that you don’t want to pick.

Rory using hand lens to identify plant features

In this case (see above photo), it was determining if the plant was Spring Gentian. In flower the plant is easily identified by it’s beautiful blue flower,  but when you only have a dried flower stalk and some leaves you need to use something like Webbs An Irish Flora plant key to make sure you have your identification correct.

Other habitats we looked at during the day included road verges, hedgerow banks, bogs (including a dried-up bog pool, unusual but perhaps not surprising after our dry June and July), and turlough (though again totally dry).

Dried bog pool

 

If you see a group of people with their heads stuck in a hedge they are likely to be some kind of scientist!

It really was a great day out.  Our group recorded about 220 species, everything from common dandelions to rare spring gentians. I learnt so much from Maria, Rory and Mark, my colleagues for the day. A huge thank you to all involved but particular Maria Long, BSBI’s Irish Officer.

Lough Carra

 

Silent Sunday

 

Devil’s bit scabious

 

Devil’s bit scabious

Heritage Week 18-26th August

Heritage Week, a celebration of all things Heritage in Ireland runs from the 18th-26th August.

I am involved in two events. The first, my now annual walk, along the River Glore at Glore Mill, looking at our wonderful wild pollinators.

The second is part of a bigger event hosted by the Inland Fisheries Ireland looking at the Ecology of Rivers in Mayo.

Wordless Wednesday

 

Bombus lucorum male

Belvedere Walled Gardens

If I whetted your appetite with my flower pattern’s post yesterday form the walled garden at Belvedere House, Co Westmeath, here are some more photos. The garden slopes, so some of the photos may seem to be a a bit of an angle.

Belvedere – Walled Garden

Belvedere – Walled Garden

Belvedere – Walled Garden

Belvedere – Walled Garden

Belvedere – Walled Garden

Belvedere – Walled Garden

Belvedere – Walled Garden

Belvedere – Walled Garden

Belvedere – Walled Garden

Pattern

Patterns and shapes are everywhere in Nature.  Today, we visited Belvedere House and Gardens in Co Westmeath.  Once a country villa, Belvedere is now owned and managed by the local council. You can visit the house, enjoy lovely woodland walks and a fairy garden. But for me the highlight was the walled garden. There was a small vegetable garden, an ornamental pond, fruit trees and some beautiful flowers beds. Here colour, shapes and patterns blended and did everything to please the eye.

I was also happy to see many pollinators,  mostly honey bees but also three different bumblebees species. The honeybees were visiting the pond to gather water.  It is the first time I have witnessed this, though I have read about it.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

 

Joining with this week’s Lens Artist Photo Challenge – Patterns.

 

 

Flake

Joining Wild Daffodil’s Photographic Monthly Meet Up with this month’s theme – Flake.

There were many layers of paint of this old boat; a little bit like life, multi-layered and interesting.