Irish creatures, wild and tame

Wagtails are everywhere. We saw them walking at the edges of roofs, on headstones in graveyards, and along fences.

Of course we saw lots of sheep. 

Geese were in a pond at Lough Boora Discovery Park in the center of Ireland. We watched from a blind,
where we also hoped to see other birds that unfortunately didn't appear.

We especially hoped to see the rare grey partridge, but unfortunately it was very windy so all we saw was the signpost.

The two places we went yesterday: in the center of Ireland. We are staying in Galway, due east of them.

From Lough Boora we went to Clonmacnoise Monastery. This ancient site is located at the crosssing of a main East-West road with the Shannon River, an important North-South route across Ireland in the Dark Ages. The monastery at Clonmacnoise (which I posted photos of yesterday) was consequently a frequent site of raids and battles in the struggle among many different people for dominance. According the the historic site's webpage: "The site includes the ruins of a cathedral, seven churches (10th -13th century), two round towers, three high crosses and the largest collection of Early Christian graveslabs in Western Europe."

From the Clonmacnoise historic site, we could see the Shannon River,
which flows diagonally across almost the entire country.

A grebe on the Shannon.

Two swans near Clonmacnoise. The white one is an
adult, the dark one a young swan.