Mitsy in the sky...

My Aunt Kay's toy poodle is galloping across the sky this evening, scut tail and all.

It's a good day for pictures in the sky. We saw a bunny rabbit with big floppy ears, a man in a periwig, and Jabba the Hut wearing sun glasses.

Days of birds and heavy weather

These past few days. Firstly on the top deck of a bus sweltering along, looking at all and nothing. I noticed over the back gardens of houses off the Old Bawn Road a flock of starlings sweeping upwards. One would arc lower using the downward fall of its trajectory to gain speed then turning the angle of its wings slightly, pulling up, up into the sky, high, higher than I had ever seen them flying before. Something about their dancing skywards puzzled me. Then I realised they were hunting. Catching flying ants rising in the heat.

The birds' wings, stretched wide out to lift them on the hot air the princess ants and male, winged ants were soaring through in invisible clouds, would suddenly twist and fold in an anxious stall as the bird almost stopped to snap up another pair of mating insects.

Further down the road, great flocks of seabirds spiralled upwards over the parklands, following the swarms. White wings upraised they swooped gracefully and plucked at the air.

No-one among the footballers or walkers or commuters stuck in traffic noticed them.

This evening, walking down the long concrete foothpath towards home I noticed scurrying platoons of ant attendants rushing frantically about, encouraging latecoming princesses in lacy wings to take off onto the dull breeze in the torid heat and run the gauntlet in the sky.

Far off towards the mountains a column of hundreds of pairs of white feathered wings blazed in the sunlight, a beautiful ballet of death and of life. The children, bored with summer holidays, didn't look up, but went about the business of who was playing with whom and who's pick it was.

Nothing ever happens in Firhouse, no doubt they'll say.

None can compare with the cliffs of.... Tallaght?

Tallaght Town Centre and two large gulls appear to have made a home recently on top of one of the pitched rooftops. I can see one of them from my office window, on the north face of the clock tower of County Hall, one sitting in the niche of a louvred ventilator. When its mate appears, the two greet each other with many "Shree! Shree! Shree!" calls that remind one of being at the seaside.

Someone speculates that perhaps the sitter is one of this year's young, still being fed by a dutiful parent.

I don't know enough about them to judge, but it looks to me like they're considering nesting on the rooftop. It is sheltered from the prevailing wind. It overlooks a courtyard that isn't accessible to the public. There are several fast-food restaurants in the area from which an enterprising gull might, conceivably, glean enough discarded food to raise a chick.

The nesting theory gained a little ground yesterday when the sitting gull maintained its position even during the worst of a number of thunderstorms that swept the area.

We are quite a way from the sea, though, and I wonder if nesting is a viable option. I shall bring my binoculars tomorrow. If nothing else, it should worry my colleagues in the opposite side of the building as I peer out the window and focus in one something unseen over their heads.

[Pic by User:Dschwen at Wikipedia Commons. Republished under terms of GNU Free Documentation Licence]

Irish Skies

When I was small and full of beans I would run around the fields outside our rented farmhouse and drop to the ground to stare up at the skies passing by.

You may think I mean the clouds, but when you lie down and look up for long enough, the clouds appear to stay still and the sky, or the earth itself, appear to move.

The skies are still passing by, but like most adults I've forgotten mostly that it's okay to stop and just look up. Here are a few recent pictures of what's up there over our heads.