Northern Ireland - The Wild Side

 In my final blog I wanted to share a few photos of the beautiful flowers, birds and seascape - and these in turn have inspired one of my latest purchases as you will find out in due course ;-)

Lovely wild violets.

The fabulous Dark Hedges at Dervock.

The morning light casts pretty  
shadows on the road.

In June the trees have leafed up 
nicely.  Many years ago, the owner of 
a nearby manor house wanted a 
dramatic entrance for his drive so he 
planted the road with these beech 
trees.  It's very effective!

A beautiful male Chaffinch near the Dark Hedges.

Sea campion with its lovely white 
flowers and bell like shape.

Pink thrift

Yellow vetch

Blue bells

A heath spotted orchid - Gorgeous!

Wild thyme

Kidney vetch.

Purple wood vetch

complete with a busy bee!

Marsh marigold (looks like a buttercup to me!)

This beautiful flower reminded me of a snowflake!

Primroses

A beautiful Fulmar sitting on the cliffs.

A flock of Oyster Catchers.

An Oyster Catcher was nesting on the
Giant's Causeway itself!

A better look -note the red eyes!

A baby Robin at the farm.

Eider ducks Mr and Mrs.

Wonderful waves crash against The Honeycomb!

Row upon row of waves head for shore.

The wind makes a back spray off the 
top of the thundering waves.

Even in less rocky places the 
waves still look fabulous.

The cliffs take a pounding and the 
noise on impact was loud!

I loved watching the shapes of the waves.

These remind me of dolphins!

And then they hit the rocks at Port Ballintrae.

In June I got some nice pics of 
The Honeycomb - here you can 
see the colours in the rocks well.  
The Honeycomb is so called 
because the basalt columns which 
make it up are very uniform in 
hexagonal shape like the honeycomb 
bees make.

And being much calmer than at Easter 
there were some lovely reflections in the water.

Some lovely limpits and barnacles were 
attached to the basalt rock on Causeway.

This colourful rock pool was alive with 
aquatic creatures and seaweeds!

Can you see the little green fish hiding 
next to the rock?!

Different vegetation grew in the pools.

And in a variety of colours.

Here's my fish again!  There were lots 
of other translucent creatures which have 
not come out on my photos but there were
lots of them!  I think they were sunning 
themselves in the sunshine.

Some lovely yellowy seaweed.

Just before I finish this post I wanted to 
share a couple more photos from the Giant's
Causeway - this one is of "The Giant's Boot" 
which I forgot to put on my earlier post - it is a 
huge stone shaped just like a boot!  Apparently 
Finn took his boots off so he could run faster!

And this formation of rocks high up on the 
cliffs is called The Organ - for obvious reasons!  

Isn't nature amazing?!