North Atlantic Skyline

Feeding time

John Smyth — Sun, 29 Jan 2012 22:37:12 +0000

A hooded crow scavenging among the beach stones on Salthill Promenade in Galway.
As I was sipping coffee on the Promenade in Salthill this morning, I noticed something moving on the sand near the waterline. It was a gull, flapping feebly and clearly dying. In a few minutes, it stopped moving. As it happened, a couple of guys were taking pictures of it (one of them moved the gull to a nearby rock for a better composition – the bird was no less dead but filled the frame in a more pleasing manner). Even as the two guys were walking around the bird, a grey (hooded ) crow landed near them and also began walking around the gull, sizing it up. Clearly, it wanted to be sure that the gull was no longer able to defend itself, but it didn’t want to delay too long either, in case other crows [it wasn't wondering what aperture to use, either].

Even as the gull was expiring, it had been transformed from predator to main course – as I write this, it is probably well chewed by now.It was probably less than 2 minutes from the time the motionless bird was placed on a rock (and was thus more visible) to the time it had been spotted as a potential meal. Hopefully , the bird was actually dead, since that wouldn’t be a prerequisite for the crow to start feeding.

Hanging Out

John Smyth — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 22:57:26 +0000

Hammered

John Smyth — Sun, 22 Jan 2012 23:29:59 +0000

Galway construction : Ten Years of the Galway Docks

John Smyth — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 00:46:57 +0000

Like all parts of the city, the docks in Galway have changed even over the last decade. Probably the biggest change is that it is now a safe place to walk at night. Above is a triptych showing the same view of the Galway Docks over the last 10 years. The oldest image is top – the middle image was taken 6 years ago and the bottom one around 6 months ago. Actually, the first thing that struck me, looking at the blue skies in each image, was that we got at least 3 sunny days in the last decade.

In the top picture is part of the Galway Docks, photographed around 2001/2002. On the far left is Padraigin’s which was an ‘early’ pub – i.e. it could open for business at 7am to facilitate arriving sailors. My experience of it, from when I lived in the Docks, was you had to be drunk to go in there, and you would definitely be drunk leaving it. The pub has changed names a couple of times even in the last 10 years – it was renamed to Sheridan’s and became a pub/restaurant and more recently is called McGinns. It no longer has a nearly morning pub license.

The white ship is the Kaigata Maru No. 52 – a fishing ship from Japan. Behind it are sheds from the McDonagh’s Fertilizer company (the company also had a factory by Wolfe Tone bridge on the site where Jury’s hotel now stands). Those sheds were demolished soon after the top picture was taken, and replaced by the new Dockgate office development. In the middle picture, the ship marked P51 is the L E Róisín, one of the Irish Naval Service fleet.

The top image was taken on slide file (and then scanned) – the other two images were taken with digital cameras.