I love cephalopods (squid, octopuses and cuttlefish). They’re among my favourite marine animals.
When I was studying Marine Biology at The University of Liverpool, we rescued an octopus that ended up in the wet lab with some Nephrops norvegicus (scampi or langoustine).
We kept him for a while, in one of the tanks at the marine lab. I spent a long time just watching him… and the changes in skin colour and texture never ceased to amaze me.
Amazing footage of the cryptic and behavioural colour changes in cephalopods in the second half of this TED talk.
For me one of the most satisfying parts of photographing wildlife (or at least attempting to) is how even our most familiar wildlife species can offer the opportunity to capture truly spectacular images.
Whether it’s a robin in your back yard, a fox visiting your garden, or a couple of blackbirds squabbling in the local park… there’s action and drama all around you. More common species, are, by definition, more accessible, and are often easier to get close to… improving your chances of capturing that winning shot.
This Herring Gull (Larus argentatus) was hanging around Lough Ine, near Skibbereen on 06 April. I had the camera with me, and took a few shots as it came in to land
More and more killer whales are being spotted in Irish waters these days… with many of the recent sightings identifiable as members of a well known pod of whales known as the Scottish West Coast Community Group.
Two of these whales were spotted from Colin Barnes’s whale watching vessel The Holly Joe not far from Galley Head, West Cork on 27th March 2010… (identity confirmed by Andy Foote from the University of Aberdeen), with a larger group of 4-5 killer whales spotted a little further west (close to Baltimore) later the same day.
Interestingly these sightings coincided with the first West Cork basking shark sightings of the season… leading Padraig Whooley, the IWDG sightings coordinator, to wonder whether the simultaneous arrival of the ocean’s apex predator and the huge but docile basking shark in Irish waters was somehow related.
Could basking shark be on the killer whale’s menu, or were they arriving together purely by chance?
If you haven’t seen it already, this Channel 4 parody of Apple’s iPad to promote their E4 service is simply priceless. Meet the ePad: take something so amazing that you can’t comprehend it… and then, make it amazinger!
E4′s E-Pad — take the most amazing thing ever, and make it amazinger!
She asked me if I’d give her latest venture a shout. It’s a wildlife series for RTÉ called Wild Journeys, which hits the screens on RTÉ One, Sunday night at 6:30pm. If you’ve seen the trailers running on RTÉ you’ll know it looks likely to be a cracking programme.
The series follows the long haul travellers of the Irish wildlife scene – from true leviathans in the form of the humpback whales and basking sharks that visit Ireland’s coasts every year, to the deceptive fragility of the beautiful painted lady butterfly – which somehow manages the mammoth journey from north Africa to Ireland.
The series will follow some of Ireland’s most iconic serial voyagers, like the Barn Swallow the Atlantic salmon and the European eel, as well as some less well known, but no less extraordinary, ones.
Here’s a summary of the wildlife feast that awaits in what promises to be a real feast not just for wildlife enthusiasts, but for everybody (taken from the CTL Films press release):
I’ve also included a business related, web-content focussed blog as part of the site re-vamp, and will be posting business related missives there, rather than here, from now on.
This will remain, as always, a personal blog that I’ll use to post all sorts of whimsical bits and pieces that cross my mind, and of course the occasional bout of spleen-venting when the Irish system gets even more frustrating than usual.
The business blog will have a much more practical focus, with hints, tips and suggestions on how to make your web content work harder for your business. I’m also experimenting with a pre-pay Web Content Audit service, and pre-pay Web Content Consultancy packages.
The idea is to help small to medium businesses to fine-tune their web content and keep control of their costs by pre-purchasing the advice and help they need… eliminating the spectre of looming invoices when cash-flow is tight. Of course it also means I get to spend more of my time helping my clients rather than chasing payments.
I think it’s a system that could work well for all concerned. I guess time will tell whether it will catch on or not.
I discovered The Book Depository just before Christmas, and what a boon it proved to be.
Like most writers I love to read… in fact reading widely is an essential part of my job. I love shopping for books online, but I always begrudged paying inflated international shipping costs to get books delivered to Ireland from leading UK book retailers.
Enter The Book Depository… which offers great books at fantastic prices with FREE worldwide shipping. Fantastic… now I could order my books and have them sent direct to my door in Ireland without paying inflated shipping costs.
I ordered a number of books for Christmas, at really great prices compared to standard booksellers rates, and they all arrived promptly in the post – no fuss, no bother and best of all… no additional cost!
From now on I’ll be buying most of my books from The Book Depository – if you’re a book lover I’d recommend that you check it out.
If things have gone a bit quiet here of late it’s because I’m busy working on a follow up book to Understanding Digital Marketing… another collaboration with my co-author Damian Ryan.
The new book… dubbed “The Best Digital Marketing Campaigns in the World – mastering the art of customer engagement”… is coming together nicely, but the deadline for delivery of the finished manuscript to our publishers Kogan Page is imminent.
So, it’s all hands on deck in a mad scramble to pull the everything together… and that means precious little time for anything else… including this blog, other websites, my various social media accounts and sundry other projects I have on the go. I will do my best to post the occasional update here over the coming month or so, but things are likely to be pretty frantic.
Some recent arrivals on the dairy farm next door… shot using available light (scarce enough in the shed in question), hand-held. Nothing that special as a photograph… but posting it here because of the undeniable “Ahhh” factor .
my latest tweets! 
More and more killer whales are being spotted in Irish waters these days… with many of the recent sightings identifiable as members of a well known pod of whales known as the Scottish West Coast Community Group.
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