Tuesday 6 August 2013

Birds and Blue Grass!

I was very annoyed yesterday because I had lost some great photographs I have taken about a month ago and edited for a future post.  I spent hours going through thousands of photos on 3 systems - but nothing.  Now could I have deleted them!!  So I went for a walk yesterday evening just over the road into Ward Park and these are the photos I took.  I will start with the birds seen and photographed.

Golden Pheasant
Greylag
This may be a hybrid between Greylag and  Canada Goose

 

This year a lot of young birds have been bred and unfortunately none of them have their names up!!  I have spoken to the man who looks after them but no change!  It is very difficult to photograph these birds because you have to shot through a 1" square wire fence!!


                                                                     Reeves Pheasant


There are plenty of Black headed Gulls both adults and young.



This is the Temminck's Tragopan.  It is distributed in forests of northern South Asia, from northeast India, northwest Vietnam, Tibet and northern provinces of China and Ward Park have a pair.


This is the male whose head is black, forming a mask around the blue facial skin that is extended during courtship; deep orange-red on crest, neck and breast; some males with bright orange collar; rest of body crimson, covered with grey spots on lower breast and black-lined white spots on wing coverts, back and upper tail coverts.   I was not able to get a photo of the female who is a  white-spotted brown bird with blue circular eye skin.  Both birds are very shy.  Its diet consists mainly of berries, grass and plants.





Peacock
We have quite a number of both male and female Peacocks at differing ages.

Song Thrush with young Starling.
There were quite a number of starlings together and at night they come in and roost in a large tree just above where I took this shot.  They must have been having their supper before going to bed!



About a week ago I showed you these Echinops that had not got the blue colour then, now they are covered in bees.  Now which ones?  I think there are 2 different ones here.

Can I say a big thank you to both Roy and Trevor for all the help they gave me in yesterdays' post and all the information and web sites that I can look up to try and learn ID of butterflies and bees.

If I had spent the time trying to work out these bees ID, you would NOT have a post today!




A big snail that had nearly reached the top of a 3' plant!

I love walking through this Rose arch as do many other people.  Children love running through it.


I was VERY surprised to see this moth and even more surprised that I was able to photograph it and then to be able to ID it was a real miracle!!  That was only because in yesterday's post I had photographed one when I had visited the RSBP Reserve in Belfast.  I only know the names of 3 moths as yet and this was one of them!!!


Now to some of the flowers in the park.  Sit back and enjoy these beautiful bedding Dahlias.





Ah!  Some more wonderful bees.  Please feel free to let me know their names if you can.  I will add them to the post.




Then the park had also been planted with beds of Cosmos in a wonderful variety of colours.










Wow!   Another Bee!
Astilbe

Sedum before the colour has appeared
Yarrow

I thought the way the parks division had planted this wonderful scarlet Crocosmia with the brightly coloured Yarrow was brilliant.


This is only a small part of the large crowd that gathered last Sunday to hear 'music in the park'.  During July and August every Sunday between 3.00pm - 5.00pm there is a different band or group and the Council provide deck chairs and picnic tables as a lot of people bring picnics.


“Oh My Darling” band who have prairie roots mixed with bluegrass, Appalachian old time, southern twang, and Franco-folk, making their style a melting pot of musical languages, were expected at the weekly concerts at Ward Park last Sunday, just beside where I live.  Unfortunately they got held up with the security alert at Heathrow Airport.


However, it was not all bad as the Irish are always very resilient and at the very last minute they gathered together 4 very talented musicians and I think they may have called themselves the Ho Bo’s band.  Anyhow they were brilliant and I videoed 2 songs for you to listen to.  It can be accessed at

http://youtu.be/789my1f62YM    If the space below is black, click it!





I hope you enjoyed this post.  I have come to terms with losing my photos!!!
Thanks for visiting and hope you will pop in again soon.

MANY THANKS TO ALL who left comments on any of my post yesterday

27 comments:

  1. I love the dahlias! Thanks for a wonderful post, Margaret. I enjoyed it very much.

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  2. what a lovely spot to live so near to Margaret; a stroll away! Interesting bird-life, plants and a concert too

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  3. I do like the big bumble bees.

    The lose of pictures is always a frustration.

    Cheers - Stewart M - Melbourne

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  4. My favourite is the three hens sitting in a line :-)

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  5. Wow, loads of pictures. You have been busy.
    The bird before the Black-headed Gull, is a Reeves Pheasant. Real stunners, with an enormous tail.

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  6. You took wonderful photos!

    Two or three Augusts ago, I accidentally deleted three months worth of photos so I feel your pain. I almost immediately purchased an external hard drive to save my photos on. I never want to lose so many photos again...it's way to easy to delete photos.

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  7. Hello Margret,
    This is a most beautiful post. You have shown some great photos. I love how you captured the bees.. the pheasant ,and peacock.
    The flower photos are stunning.
    I am not good at remembering names of birds.. Here , where I live we have a lot of birds, but i dont know all their names.
    5 years ago.. I lost over 1.000 photos.. totally lost. So many of my children and grandchildren.. I was ill for a few days.
    Just have to get up and start again.. sorry to hear you lost yours.

    I like this group.. love their sound.
    wishing you a happy tuesday.. val

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  8. I loved looking through all these wonderful photos, thank you Margaret. Sorry to hear you lost your photos. The same happened to me a while back. Now I put my favorites on flickr for a backup. I also once deleted everything on a camera card but you can get programs that will retrieve your photos on that camera card. I need to get another as I lost the program when my computer crashed a while back. Another story ;(

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  9. sorry you lost those photos. i like the gull with reflection shot! exotic fowl, too.

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  10. Such magnificent photos, Margaret! I'm sorry about the lost photos. Is there a chance they might still be in the recycle bin? I use Carbonite online backup. If I delete something accidentally, it's still available on Carbonite for a month. After that, they delete it, too. I feel your pain. It would be a great loss.

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  11. Margaret, these are GORGEOUS-sorry about the photo loss-it is so disappointing but a good excuse to redo them if you can that is-super post!

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  12. Unique and interesting birds. Your flower photos are exquisite and music in the park looks like a fun time.

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  13. What a fabulous post,filled with so much beauty. Thank-you for sharing these.

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  14. The birds are brilliant, all sorts, but nice. And, scrolled down the list of flowers, I found this, they were superb. I loved each of them.

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  15. I agree, it is not wise to hang around and try to identify a bee's identity!!! Goodness, what a plenitude of gorgeous pictures. I LOVE your cosmos centers in macro!!! And the Tragopan, he is really something else!!! We must not have anything like him here. I love the gull and his reflection you captured. And the Golden Pheasant, wow!!! I really thought he was an exotic African parrot of some kind that had been kept as a pet and escaped!

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  16. Beautiful photos!
    Nie day, RW & SK

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  17. Wonderful photos.....I can't believe that Crocosmia is already flowering! Mine has barely got its leaves.

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  18. Gorgeous photos Margaret - lovely to see so many bees, birds and beautiful flowers. You are lucky to have such a wonderful place to visit so close.

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  19. Hi Margaret,
    Beautiful pictures of the flowers and the bees.
    They are very sharp and many details, well done!!

    Greetings Irma

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  20. Love your bird photos - so different to the ones I see. And I am pleased to find another bird and garden obsessive.

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  21. Lovely photos from you! I recognized the greylag and black-headed gulls from the wild in my country too. Greetings Pia

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  22. Great post! each picture is pretty and delightful. such an amazing photography.
    really, great captures your magical eyes.

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  23. So many beautiful birds and flowers and such beautiful photos of them! That Tragopan is amazing!

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  24. Lovely post Margaret- and what fun to listen to a band in the park. Wish someone would do that around here...of course- in the fall or spring when it isn't so blooming hot! Lovely flowers too- such pretty colors.

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  25. Seeing all the wonderfully exotic--to me--birds in your post has made me want to get over to our city wild bird avairy, Margaret. This is my favorite kind of post--filled with great photos and information so that it's educational as well. I'm so sorry that you lost so many photos. Your experience has made me realize that I need to back up mine as my computer is grinding to a crash, I fear.

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