Listening to the growing storm outside I think all the leaves will be finally be gone off the trees tomorrow. Autumn will be gone and winter will be here.
Dublin
Guinness Time
We went to the pub yesterday to watch Ireland play South Africa in the Guinness Series 2010. Unfortunately South Africa were the better team and apart from a late rally that brought Ireland tantalizingly close to snatching a victory most of the match was forgettable. So much so that at one stage I took out my camera and decided to grab a few shots. It was a bit dark so I had to set the ISO quite high and that made the images very noisy but I like this one so I thought I’d post it up.
The Wall
The Dublin City Marathon was on over the bank holiday weekend and the route takes it close to where I live. Conveniently from a photographic point of view it’s also around mile 20 where the legendary wall is supposed to lurk waiting for runners to bang into it. Many runners came by looking like they had started the race 500 meters away around the bend but many more came by looking like they were dragging the world behind them.
I dont think I’d ever be able to run even a half marathon so I admire anyone who made it to 20 miles and I hope all those who passed my camera finally made it to the finish line and woke up this morning with a deserved sense of achievement and pride.
The Last Autumn
On Saturday I walked through St Stephens Green and it struck me that this is the last Autumn for this part of the Green.
By October next year these trees will have been removed to make room for a new Metro station. Personally in post Celtic Tiger Ireland I don’t see the need for the Metro or how we can afford it both financially and spiritually, for the Green is the heart of the city center and no cost benefit analysis can measure that.
They promise to restore the Green to its former glory after the building has finished. I believe they mean well and a lot of effort is going into documenting the current layout and structure of the Green so that everything can be put back where it was but no matter how much effort they put into replacing stones and railings it still takes 200 years to fully restore a 200 year old park.
Orangutan Tree
While visiting the zoo I went around on my own after the official tour ended. I stopped for a while at the orangutan enclosure. Compared to the chimpanzees the orangutans space looks much smaller and less interesting but I have the impression they are quieter animals than chimps and perhaps the space is large enough for them though I’m sure the zoo would jump at the chance to allocate more space to them if it was possible. One orangutan sat in the tree and it took some coaching from the keeper to get her to come down and eat lunch. Eventually she did come down but it seemed like she was only doing it to poke at the food and get rid of the annoying human.
Chimpanzee Breakfast
Yesterday a group of Irish bloggers and photo bloggers were invited to tour Dublin Zoo early in the morning to see the zoo before it opened to the public and while the keepers and handlers were getting the animals up and about for the day and feeding them breakfast.
For the tour the large group of bloggers was broken into 3 smaller groups and the group I was in was lucky enough to see the chimpanzees being brought out and given their morning treat of apples. The photos I took make them look sad as if they were begging for the apples but really it was more like they were demanding their apples, waving at the keeper and stretching out their arms saying “where is my apple, throw it now”.
I know many people dislike zoos but it is obvious that the staff of Dublin Zoo care for the animals and are passionate about conservation both in and in the wild. In some cases the goal is to breed animals in captivity so that stocks can be returned to the wild where they are extinct. In an ideal world there would be no need to return animals to the wild but until man stops destroying animal habitats and poaching to feed black market demands well run zoos may prove to be an ark preserving endangered species.
A big thank you to Dublin Zoo and the organisers of the tour, I was delighted to be invited to chat with some great photo bloggers whose blogs I had seen but who I had never met in person before. It was great to see so many old and new faces and I didn’t have enough time to talk to everyone I wanted to. Hopefully there will be more photo tours and walks organised and I’ll get to chat with everyone. I have lots more photos to process and I’ll be uploading more here and to my flickr or pix.ie accounts.