Anticrepuscular rays at Flagstaff lookout.

This is a short post to let people know I intend to continue posting and writing for this blog, so this post is just to keep things rolling.
In the coming months I hope to post images of our Autumn trip around the South Island of New Zealand before we had to rush home and prepare to shift to Northern Ireland.

Anticrepuscular rays at flagstaff

Earlier this year Rosie and I experienced some amazing Anticrepuscular rays at Flagstaff lookout.

Anticrepuscular rays, or antisolar ray are meteorological optical phenomena similar to crepuscular rays, but appear opposite the Sun in the sky. Anticrepuscular rays are essentially parallel, but appear to converge toward the antisolar point, the vanishing point, due to a visual illusion from linear perspective.

Anticrepuscular rays are most frequently visible around sunrise or sunset. This is because the atmospheric light scattering that makes them visible (backscattering) is larger for low angles to the horizon than most other angles. Anticrepuscular rays are dimmer than crepuscular rays because backscattering is less than forward scattering.

Anticrepuscular rays can be continuous with crepuscular rays, curving across the whole sky in great circles.

Autumn Bird Photography at Shelling Hill Beach

We were in no hurry, the sun had risen an hour earlier, but we made our leisurely way south down the A1, across the border and into County Louth.
We had decided that we would spend a relaxing day simply exploring Templeton beach and enjoy some autumn bird photography on the Cooley Peninsula with the main purpose of our visit, to hopefully photograph wheaters.
Not having visited the area before we wanted to take our time exploring, after all you only get to enjoy an area for the first time, once.

As it turned out this would also be our first trip to Shelling Hill beach.
Our original plan was to start our adventure at Templeton Beach, but we arrived at Shelling Hill beach instead, so how did we end up there? Let me explain.
Please read the rest of this post here

Street Photography in Carlingford Village

 

While doing some research on migratory birds in Ireland, Rosie and I learned that Carlingford Lough is an area of vital importance to wading birds. Each year large numbers of migrating waders from the arctic regions overwinter on the lough with parts of the lough being designated as special protection areas. It was that information that initially drew our curiosity towards the village of Carlingford in Ireland.

Carlingford Lough shore with Rostrevor Mountains in N Ireland ‘smoking’ in the background

Being serious bird photographers we knew that in order for us to successfully photograph the wintering birds of Carlingford Lough, it would require many visits over the winter into early spring. We had heaps of planning and information gathering ahead of us and still do at the time of writing this post.

While researching the lough, images of the colourful town houses kept popping up on our computer screens… intriguing us. So it was decided that for our first big adventure down south, we would do some street photography in Carlingford village. Then we would explore the lough and its surrounds on later visits.

We are shifting over to our new platform with a brand new name Ireland bird and nature photography. Please come over and check out our new adventures.

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The colour of spring part 1

Having experienced my first spring here in Northern Ireland with Rosie, I felt the urge to share some of what we have been photographing over this period.

Late March saw the first of the spring flowers appearing from their hibernation.

Back home in New Zealand, daffodil and crocus are the first flowers to erupt from the earth, bringing colour to an otherwise muted tapestry of grey, brown and green.
It seems that this is also the case in Northern Ireland.

Derrymore House, the yellow cottage

Derrymore house

You can read the rest of this post over at our new blog here

 

Christmas trip for long tails 2020 Part 2: koekoeā paradise

System reboot and the apology

Last year I was to start the year off with blog posts containing images of birds, stories of adventures and images of New Zealand landscapes.
After my first post of our Christmas trip and promises of more to come, my readers ended up with nothing from me for an entire year.
Once again I failed to follow up with part two of our annual  Chrissie adventure.
I apologise for that but please let me explain.