Wild Christmas 31st December

Firstly, I would like to wish you all a Happy New Year. I hope 2022 lets you find kindness at every turn.

Continuing with my 12 days of Christmas wild things, today we went on a community sponsored 8 km walk to raise funds for a new community park in our small village. Despite being a grey day it brought lots of laughter and joy.

The view, better on a bright day

You may notice in the photograph above that the gorse (bush with yellow flowers) is already blooming. This plant does flower early, but 31 December seems particularly early. We also saw quite a few dandelions in bloom, Herb-Robert and the hogweed shown in the photograph below (with accompanying mating flies).

Hogweed in bloom, 31st December

At least the trees look like they should in winter.

Trees

A big thank you to all the blogging community out there for your continued support and comments. I look forward to reading your blogs in 2022.

Happy New Year

Wild Christmas 30th December

Continuing with my 12 days of Christmas wild things, we had a lovely walk at Moore Hall today. Moorehall is designated Special Area of Conservation for Lesser Horseshoe Bat. There are a number of relatively new wildlife sculptures and benches which now add additional interest to the walk, which I have blogged about before. Bats of course are the highlight here.

But many other mammals were also present.

And other animals too, the pike and dragonfly associated wit Lough Carra, which borders the site.

Pike

Owl

Dragonfly

Wordless Wednesday Wild Christmas 29th December

Mossy forest

Bramble thorns in Monochrome

Wild Christmas 28th December

December 28th

So continuing with my 12 days of Christmas wild things, we had a lovely walk at Union Wood in Co Sligo today. Lots of nice things seen but I thought I would just share my favourite shot of the day – taken within Union Wood Nature Reserve, with the lensglobe nestled in a beautiful bed of moss and the majestic oaks reflected in the glass.

Union Wood

Wild Christmas 24th-27th December

Cathy alerted me to the fact that in the UK, the Wildlife Trust challenge people to the 12 Days Wild at Christmas, running from the 25th December to the 5th January. The idea is to do something to help nature but I was thinking it may be nice opportunity to just observe and record nature too. I am going to try and share with you what I see each day. I am starting on the 24th though as this may well be one of my wildlife highlights of the year.

December 24th

We went for a local walk and spotted these two Irish hare in our neighbours field. I think they thought it was spring as they were chasing each other around.

Hares, and particularly Irish hares, are among my favourite animals.

Giving chase

They ran though the whole field, coming quite close at times.

December 25th

All I have to show for this day is our Christmas tree. This year it is a birch tree.

Lensglobe

December 26th

We enjoyed a lovely walk with my sister and spotted this raven who appeared to be cleaning his beak on this old fence post.

Raven

December 27th

A finally a cute little mushroom from our walk today, not sure if it is going to grow to a shaggy ink cap or if it is something totally different.

Fungus

More to follow during the week.

Silent Sunday

Winter’s day

Happy Christmas

A very happy festive season to you all. May you find joy and pleasure in the simple delights, family and friends.

Happy Winter Solstice

Finally, we have reached the shortest day of the year in the Northern Hemisphere. At least things will start going the right direction now. Some serene images to celebrate. Happy Solstice to everyone and special thanks to our Lens Artists host for providing some great challenges throughout 2021 including this one.

Winter light though bramble leaves

Early morning fog

Silent Sunday

Watchful cat

Lens-Artists Challenge #178 – You Choose

So this week Tina’ let us choose our own theme. I am, perhaps unsurprisingly, going for some glorious bees to remind us of last summer and to help us look forward to next year. They are mostly bumblebees but I had to include the beautiful solitary mining bee too.

White tailed bumblebee

Common carder bee

Great Yellow Bumblebee

Red tailed bee

White tailed bee in flight

Early bumblebee

Gardebn bumblebee

Early bumblebee

Grey mining bee (solitary bee)

White tailed bee