Bliain - Part 20
27th September 2021
Part twenty of my project to make a photograph every day for a full year, or bliain in Irish. Find Part 19 here.
14th September
After a welcome few days off work it was great to get back out on the water and see signs of life at sea. Up to now it was a relatively poor season for big whales off West Kerry, with very little feeding activity observed in the last few weeks. But today the Bay was host to multiple flocks of gannets diving on fish corralled to the surface by dolphins. And all of these shoals of feed drew in at least three different humpback whales too. The animal pictured here was bubble net feeding, a strategy employed by some humpbacks to trap fish within a hollow tube of rising air bubbles of the whale’s own making. Placing itself at the bottom of the tube the whale pushes the fish to the surface, where they’re trapped against the ceiling of the sea. The jaws, clearly visible here, appear soon after the bubbles are seen on the surface, and close around what is hopefully a decent mouthful of fish (a few fish are visible if you zoom in on this image.) I don’t think I’ve ever seen younger humpbacks using this technique. Smaller animals tend to lunge at shoals and move around quite a lot, appearing youthfully energetic though maybe not so skilled. Larger, older humpbacks often use bubble nets and seem to move around a lot less erratically. Presumably this is a much more efficient method of feeding, though it all depends on the prey. In springtime in Ireland humpbacks are most likely to feed on sandeels, which are generally found at depth. Bubble net feeding isn’t observed much (if ever?) at this time of year. By autumn however, sprat begin to move inshore in big numbers, and spend most of their time in the upper layers of the sea. The green rings of rising bubbles that put hearts in the mouths of whale watchers the world over seem to mark the arrival of sprat to Irish inshore waters in late summer or early autumn. Or so it seems. Plenty of what’s ‘known’ about humpback whales is yet to be backed up with solid evidence. It’s part of what makes seeing them so exciting – there’s still so much to be understood and so many new marvels to be amazed by.
15th September
Another exciting day with the big blubber, and with a particularly interesting animal at that. This humpback was the 23rd individual to be recorded in Irish waters, using the markings on the underside of the tail flukes to distinguish it from others of the species. That was some time back in the early 2010s (we’re at 114 animals now), and this particular animal has been recorded regularly since. As it happens I drive around in a company van adorned with this particular tail during the summer work season. So it was especially nice to see it again after more than a year since my last encounter. HBIRL23 is a great fluker, by which I mean it regularly raises its tail high out of the water when going down for a deep dive. This makes it readily identifiable, much more so than some animals that show the undersides of their flukes less frequently. It also makes for a great crowd pleaser. There’s something lovely about a boatload of humans sharing in the collective joy of watching a big whale kink its back and reveal those huge fins, curving at their ends under their own huge weight and trailing a small waterfall. The communal awe is palpable as the flukes hit the apex of their bell curve trajectory, and a loud cheer often follows after they slip with hardly a ripple back into the sea. If humpbacks were rated like Olympic divers HBIRL23 would get regular nines. Bar one or two suffering from seasickness I think everybody went home happy this evening. It’s my sincere hope that such wonder stays with people and helps guide them towards decisions that make the world a better place for the other species we share it with.
16th September
Gallarus oratory by night, lit in a slightly spooky manner. I should have saved this one for Halloween but I neglected to head out before heavy rain arrived today and had to make do with an image made after dark. The shadows of the stones projecting over the inside of the doorway reveal the holes hewn into them, possibly for hanging a door. I’m not sure how close to its ‘original’ state this old church is in; many of the old Irish monuments have been subject to considerable restoration work. I don’t know how decisions are made about what stage in history an ancient monument should be ‘restored’ to but it’s been something I’ve been thinking about since my visit to Skellig Michael last week. At times the renovations seem a little heavy handed, but if there has been any major work done to Gallarus oratory since the time of its heyday it’s certainly been done with a delicate touch as far as my untrained eye can tell.
17th September
A top down view of the marshy ground behind the beach at Baile an Rannaigh. I love these kinds of abstract images, focusing on textures, shapes and colours that could be from anywhere, rather than a scene that’s tied to a specific place. This one has the look of a petri dish experiment about it. A nice surprise find with the drone this evening.
18th September
Early light on the western end of Smerwick Harbour. This show of sunshine was a brief one, just about making itself seen between the dark of last night and that incoming weather front dimming the sky. It was nice to be out at the beach on such a fine morning, especially knowing that wind and rain were imminent. It’s also a relief to get a useable image for this project so early in the day. All too often recently I’ve left the task to the last few hours of daylight and been scrambling to come up with a workable idea before dark. Given that I have a day off work today it’s good to know I can fully relax now I’ve an image in the bag. The relaxed enthusiasm I started with 270 days ago has been replaced by a sense of having something hanging over me each and every day before an image is made. I’ve even had angsty dreams of accidentally missing a day and botching the whole project. Such self-inflicted nonsense! It’s as if this silly idea was actually important. As an unusually intense work season winds down I’m looking forward to having a bit more time to engage with the process of this endeavour, rather than worrying about getting to the end result.
19th September
A gannet stretched to its six-foot wingspan on the search for food in Dingle Bay. That enormous beak and sharp eye make this big seabird an efficient predator. Gannets, going against the trend of almost every other marine bird, are increasing in numbers. It’s a rare good news story from the natural world, and hopefully not just a brief upward trend.
20th September
Another good day at work today, and another humpback image to add to this series. This is HBIRL24, a regular enough visitor to Ireland (it’s the same whale featured on September 14th) and one with an interesting backstory put together by local whale guru Nick Massett. It’s reckoned that this whale was born in 2013, to HBIRL17. The two were seen together back then, very obviously different in size and a year after HBIRL17 was photographed breaching with a rather big belly. This theory could be wrong of course, it’s all based on best guesses. But in 2019 HBIRL17 was photographed alongside another much smaller animal (which turned out to be HBIRL94, who we’ve seen at work recently too), which further adds to the idea of HBIRL17 being a female who’s brought two calves to the feeding grounds in Ireland in the past decade. It’s not terribly uncommon to see humpbacks travelling in pairs but when there are very obvious size differences and the two are glued to each other’s sides as opposed to just occupying the same general area then it seems a safe bet to assume it’s a mother and calf pair. If all of that is correct this whale is eight years old now, and a decent size. It’ll be interesting to see how its life unfolds, assuming it can be rerecorded in the coming years and decades.
21st September
Skellig Michael seen through a long lens over miles of open ocean. We’re approaching the autumnal equinox, the time of equal parts day and night before the darkness starts to take over from the light. I would have liked to photograph the sun to mark that fact today, but it hardly made an appearance. Instead there were many showers of mist and drizzle, one of which wasn’t long after passing over the Skellig when this image was made. Winter is well on its way now, with many more showers to come and go.
22nd September
Fine bright haws on an old hawthorn tree means it must be autumn. These berries are edible but unexciting to the modern palate, spoiled as many of us are with ready supplies of exotic food. Folklore associates them with remedies for heart trouble, at least of the physical kind. Whether or not there’s any truth to this I don’t fully know, but there’s often some veracity in the old ways, and belief goes an awful long way in the effectiveness of treatments. Seeing a big old hawthorn resplendent in red fruit at this time of year is certainly something to lift the heart anyway.
23rd September
A pair of exuberant common dolphins, glossily wet in the lowering autumn sun as they leapt towards our boat. Today could well be my last chance to spend time around these energising animals for this year. After the finest summer season I’ve ever known it looks like the calm sea conditions are finally starting to break down; the forecast for the coming week is quite poor. I’ll be glad to have some time to wind down from a hectic summer but I’ll certainly miss having regular opportunities to be out on the water and watching the comings and goings of the marine wildlife that drew me to come and live on this peninsula. I might have to start playing the lotto in the hopes of getting myself a little boat...
24th September
Aesthetic neglect at Cuan. I’ve noticed this old boat since I’ve lived here, rotting away in complementary colours to the hedge that’s slowly swallowing it.
25th September
Last night I swam over these sands, in a sea alive with bioluminescent plankton. Every moving limb ignited neon blue sparks in the dark, so that the outline of my body and its movements were lit in a firefly glow. The water dripping from raised arms was similarly speckled with brief points of blue light as it poured back along my skin to the silky sea. It was like living in a fantasy film, but it was of course very very real. There were plenty of others out in the dark, enjoying the spectacle and adding their laughter and exclamations of wonder to the calm, dark night. I stayed in my van near the strand and walked the beach this morning, admiring the patterns along the margins of the dark and light bands of sand. So much about this place, from the large scale landscapes to the little details, seems touched with magic.
26th September
There was a splendid sunset at the coast of Dún Chaoin this evening. The obvious temptation was to have the camera facing west, and so I set it up as so, but I wasn’t particularly enamoured by the composition I’d found (as is almost always the case along this stretch of coast for some reason). I turned around as the colours peaked and chanced upon this simpler scene, and I much prefer it. That shock of colour through the pewter grey has a lot more appeal to me than the cluttered coastline overlooking the islands. I imagine the majority of people would choose the other option, but that’s irrelevant. While we’re all influenced by others and can learn a lot from our peers it’s also important in any creative endeavour to stay true to what excites you and not have what you do be dictated by the opinions and trends of others. It’s easier said than done of course, but I feel I’m almost always conscious of the concept at least. If I am the only person in the world who’s pleased by something I’ve created then I’m winning. If it resonates with somebody else too then that’s a bonus.
27th September
Dusk at Gleann Fán as another huge shower blows in off the Atlantic. It was a day of such rainsheets sailing ashore, with the regularity of a production line conveyer belt. As nice as it might be to watch the weather from a house like this I think I’d find it too wild a place to live. Having spent the last six years on a windy hillside with views that impress all visitors I know full well how wide open vistas are paid for by exposure to the weather. And we get an awful lot of weather in West Kerry. I’d take a bit of shelter over a totally open, scenic outlook if I had the choice. That said, I can think of plenty worse places to live than these western slopes that lead down to the sea.
Find Part 21 here
14th September
After a welcome few days off work it was great to get back out on the water and see signs of life at sea. Up to now it was a relatively poor season for big whales off West Kerry, with very little feeding activity observed in the last few weeks. But today the Bay was host to multiple flocks of gannets diving on fish corralled to the surface by dolphins. And all of these shoals of feed drew in at least three different humpback whales too. The animal pictured here was bubble net feeding, a strategy employed by some humpbacks to trap fish within a hollow tube of rising air bubbles of the whale’s own making. Placing itself at the bottom of the tube the whale pushes the fish to the surface, where they’re trapped against the ceiling of the sea. The jaws, clearly visible here, appear soon after the bubbles are seen on the surface, and close around what is hopefully a decent mouthful of fish (a few fish are visible if you zoom in on this image.) I don’t think I’ve ever seen younger humpbacks using this technique. Smaller animals tend to lunge at shoals and move around quite a lot, appearing youthfully energetic though maybe not so skilled. Larger, older humpbacks often use bubble nets and seem to move around a lot less erratically. Presumably this is a much more efficient method of feeding, though it all depends on the prey. In springtime in Ireland humpbacks are most likely to feed on sandeels, which are generally found at depth. Bubble net feeding isn’t observed much (if ever?) at this time of year. By autumn however, sprat begin to move inshore in big numbers, and spend most of their time in the upper layers of the sea. The green rings of rising bubbles that put hearts in the mouths of whale watchers the world over seem to mark the arrival of sprat to Irish inshore waters in late summer or early autumn. Or so it seems. Plenty of what’s ‘known’ about humpback whales is yet to be backed up with solid evidence. It’s part of what makes seeing them so exciting – there’s still so much to be understood and so many new marvels to be amazed by.
15th September
Another exciting day with the big blubber, and with a particularly interesting animal at that. This humpback was the 23rd individual to be recorded in Irish waters, using the markings on the underside of the tail flukes to distinguish it from others of the species. That was some time back in the early 2010s (we’re at 114 animals now), and this particular animal has been recorded regularly since. As it happens I drive around in a company van adorned with this particular tail during the summer work season. So it was especially nice to see it again after more than a year since my last encounter. HBIRL23 is a great fluker, by which I mean it regularly raises its tail high out of the water when going down for a deep dive. This makes it readily identifiable, much more so than some animals that show the undersides of their flukes less frequently. It also makes for a great crowd pleaser. There’s something lovely about a boatload of humans sharing in the collective joy of watching a big whale kink its back and reveal those huge fins, curving at their ends under their own huge weight and trailing a small waterfall. The communal awe is palpable as the flukes hit the apex of their bell curve trajectory, and a loud cheer often follows after they slip with hardly a ripple back into the sea. If humpbacks were rated like Olympic divers HBIRL23 would get regular nines. Bar one or two suffering from seasickness I think everybody went home happy this evening. It’s my sincere hope that such wonder stays with people and helps guide them towards decisions that make the world a better place for the other species we share it with.
16th September
Gallarus oratory by night, lit in a slightly spooky manner. I should have saved this one for Halloween but I neglected to head out before heavy rain arrived today and had to make do with an image made after dark. The shadows of the stones projecting over the inside of the doorway reveal the holes hewn into them, possibly for hanging a door. I’m not sure how close to its ‘original’ state this old church is in; many of the old Irish monuments have been subject to considerable restoration work. I don’t know how decisions are made about what stage in history an ancient monument should be ‘restored’ to but it’s been something I’ve been thinking about since my visit to Skellig Michael last week. At times the renovations seem a little heavy handed, but if there has been any major work done to Gallarus oratory since the time of its heyday it’s certainly been done with a delicate touch as far as my untrained eye can tell.
17th September
A top down view of the marshy ground behind the beach at Baile an Rannaigh. I love these kinds of abstract images, focusing on textures, shapes and colours that could be from anywhere, rather than a scene that’s tied to a specific place. This one has the look of a petri dish experiment about it. A nice surprise find with the drone this evening.
18th September
Early light on the western end of Smerwick Harbour. This show of sunshine was a brief one, just about making itself seen between the dark of last night and that incoming weather front dimming the sky. It was nice to be out at the beach on such a fine morning, especially knowing that wind and rain were imminent. It’s also a relief to get a useable image for this project so early in the day. All too often recently I’ve left the task to the last few hours of daylight and been scrambling to come up with a workable idea before dark. Given that I have a day off work today it’s good to know I can fully relax now I’ve an image in the bag. The relaxed enthusiasm I started with 270 days ago has been replaced by a sense of having something hanging over me each and every day before an image is made. I’ve even had angsty dreams of accidentally missing a day and botching the whole project. Such self-inflicted nonsense! It’s as if this silly idea was actually important. As an unusually intense work season winds down I’m looking forward to having a bit more time to engage with the process of this endeavour, rather than worrying about getting to the end result.
19th September
A gannet stretched to its six-foot wingspan on the search for food in Dingle Bay. That enormous beak and sharp eye make this big seabird an efficient predator. Gannets, going against the trend of almost every other marine bird, are increasing in numbers. It’s a rare good news story from the natural world, and hopefully not just a brief upward trend.
20th September
Another good day at work today, and another humpback image to add to this series. This is HBIRL24, a regular enough visitor to Ireland (it’s the same whale featured on September 14th) and one with an interesting backstory put together by local whale guru Nick Massett. It’s reckoned that this whale was born in 2013, to HBIRL17. The two were seen together back then, very obviously different in size and a year after HBIRL17 was photographed breaching with a rather big belly. This theory could be wrong of course, it’s all based on best guesses. But in 2019 HBIRL17 was photographed alongside another much smaller animal (which turned out to be HBIRL94, who we’ve seen at work recently too), which further adds to the idea of HBIRL17 being a female who’s brought two calves to the feeding grounds in Ireland in the past decade. It’s not terribly uncommon to see humpbacks travelling in pairs but when there are very obvious size differences and the two are glued to each other’s sides as opposed to just occupying the same general area then it seems a safe bet to assume it’s a mother and calf pair. If all of that is correct this whale is eight years old now, and a decent size. It’ll be interesting to see how its life unfolds, assuming it can be rerecorded in the coming years and decades.
21st September
Skellig Michael seen through a long lens over miles of open ocean. We’re approaching the autumnal equinox, the time of equal parts day and night before the darkness starts to take over from the light. I would have liked to photograph the sun to mark that fact today, but it hardly made an appearance. Instead there were many showers of mist and drizzle, one of which wasn’t long after passing over the Skellig when this image was made. Winter is well on its way now, with many more showers to come and go.
22nd September
Fine bright haws on an old hawthorn tree means it must be autumn. These berries are edible but unexciting to the modern palate, spoiled as many of us are with ready supplies of exotic food. Folklore associates them with remedies for heart trouble, at least of the physical kind. Whether or not there’s any truth to this I don’t fully know, but there’s often some veracity in the old ways, and belief goes an awful long way in the effectiveness of treatments. Seeing a big old hawthorn resplendent in red fruit at this time of year is certainly something to lift the heart anyway.
23rd September
A pair of exuberant common dolphins, glossily wet in the lowering autumn sun as they leapt towards our boat. Today could well be my last chance to spend time around these energising animals for this year. After the finest summer season I’ve ever known it looks like the calm sea conditions are finally starting to break down; the forecast for the coming week is quite poor. I’ll be glad to have some time to wind down from a hectic summer but I’ll certainly miss having regular opportunities to be out on the water and watching the comings and goings of the marine wildlife that drew me to come and live on this peninsula. I might have to start playing the lotto in the hopes of getting myself a little boat...
24th September
Aesthetic neglect at Cuan. I’ve noticed this old boat since I’ve lived here, rotting away in complementary colours to the hedge that’s slowly swallowing it.
25th September
Last night I swam over these sands, in a sea alive with bioluminescent plankton. Every moving limb ignited neon blue sparks in the dark, so that the outline of my body and its movements were lit in a firefly glow. The water dripping from raised arms was similarly speckled with brief points of blue light as it poured back along my skin to the silky sea. It was like living in a fantasy film, but it was of course very very real. There were plenty of others out in the dark, enjoying the spectacle and adding their laughter and exclamations of wonder to the calm, dark night. I stayed in my van near the strand and walked the beach this morning, admiring the patterns along the margins of the dark and light bands of sand. So much about this place, from the large scale landscapes to the little details, seems touched with magic.
26th September
There was a splendid sunset at the coast of Dún Chaoin this evening. The obvious temptation was to have the camera facing west, and so I set it up as so, but I wasn’t particularly enamoured by the composition I’d found (as is almost always the case along this stretch of coast for some reason). I turned around as the colours peaked and chanced upon this simpler scene, and I much prefer it. That shock of colour through the pewter grey has a lot more appeal to me than the cluttered coastline overlooking the islands. I imagine the majority of people would choose the other option, but that’s irrelevant. While we’re all influenced by others and can learn a lot from our peers it’s also important in any creative endeavour to stay true to what excites you and not have what you do be dictated by the opinions and trends of others. It’s easier said than done of course, but I feel I’m almost always conscious of the concept at least. If I am the only person in the world who’s pleased by something I’ve created then I’m winning. If it resonates with somebody else too then that’s a bonus.
27th September
Dusk at Gleann Fán as another huge shower blows in off the Atlantic. It was a day of such rainsheets sailing ashore, with the regularity of a production line conveyer belt. As nice as it might be to watch the weather from a house like this I think I’d find it too wild a place to live. Having spent the last six years on a windy hillside with views that impress all visitors I know full well how wide open vistas are paid for by exposure to the weather. And we get an awful lot of weather in West Kerry. I’d take a bit of shelter over a totally open, scenic outlook if I had the choice. That said, I can think of plenty worse places to live than these western slopes that lead down to the sea.
Find Part 21 here