An after school stopoff is very popular with my two, nothing like an opportunity to fling stones into water to win the hearts and minds of boys. Our usual close and easy stop is by the humpback bridge in Rahan and a more swollen than usual Grand Canal. Today was much more like an normal April day, if a bit warmer, so clouds featured strongly. Everything is so plain along the bank right now, you can see where the irises are starting to make an appearance, but the overall look is of a place that's been to the barbers recently for a short back and sides.A lot of the trees have made a decent stab at getting their leaves on. Beeches are being their usual laggardy selves, horse chestnuts are out but small and limp towards what they will become. I always feel like I'm caught unaware by trees bursting into leaf - I see them with their characteristic buds and then them with their leaves but in many cases I seem to miss the transition, so I was pleased to catch these shots:
The boys experimented with skipping stones and photographing splashes, I quite like this one, it looks a little like many water creatures bursting open mawed from beneath the surface:
We decided to check in on some tadpoles we discovered last week in Clara Bog while we were at it. The bog is looking a bit sorry for itself at the moment, it's only starting to pick up the colours that make it look so amazing on a twilight evening with silver mists draped low across the heathers.
The tadpole pool is nothing to write home about, surrounded by a lot of felled young willow just the minute and right at the side of the road. The road has had a litter problem and there are new CCTV cameras which seem to be helping cut down on larger scale rubbish dumping. This time the pool had what we thought at first were silver little beetles whizzing about amongst the waterboatmen. We carefully caught one in a small plastic tub and it it's already dizzying pace picked up even more, it tore around the tub like something possessed. We realised that it was actually dark in colour, oval in shape with little stumpy legs, very like paddles, on the back. The silver was a bubble it was travelling with, indented into the water surface. I'm pretty sure after some googling that it was a (fantastically named) whirligig beetle. I'm even more pleased with them because I'm reliably informed they feast on midges, meaning there are less of those about to feast on me.
The tadpoles are still teeming in the pool, which is great. We very carefully dipped a pot in to have a look at a few and very, very carefully put them back exactly where we found them.
The tadpole pool is nothing to write home about, surrounded by a lot of felled young willow just the minute and right at the side of the road. The road has had a litter problem and there are new CCTV cameras which seem to be helping cut down on larger scale rubbish dumping. This time the pool had what we thought at first were silver little beetles whizzing about amongst the waterboatmen. We carefully caught one in a small plastic tub and it it's already dizzying pace picked up even more, it tore around the tub like something possessed. We realised that it was actually dark in colour, oval in shape with little stumpy legs, very like paddles, on the back. The silver was a bubble it was travelling with, indented into the water surface. I'm pretty sure after some googling that it was a (fantastically named) whirligig beetle. I'm even more pleased with them because I'm reliably informed they feast on midges, meaning there are less of those about to feast on me.The tadpoles are still teeming in the pool, which is great. We very carefully dipped a pot in to have a look at a few and very, very carefully put them back exactly where we found them.
I'd like to figure out a way to get a really good close up. We will report on their progress again next week, and hopefully have a photo or two to show the differences.
In case anyone wants to visit: Bridge over Grand Canal, Rahan
And the rough location of the tadpole pond on the road through Clara Bog. Just looking at street view pictures and there really were a lot more trees when those shots were taken.
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