The feeder at Carbery Cottage Guest Lodge on the Sheep’s Head is inside a rusted steel cage, so I couldn’t get a single photo without bars in it. It also stops crows and larger birds getting at the food! The great tits were juveniles, still yellow in the cheek and a bit ragged about the…

The cardoons in Blarney Castle Gardens have been left to flower, which is what you do if you want bees rather than dinner. This one was about the size of my fist, and the bumblebee had worked its way into the lower edge of it, half buried in the purple. I shot it zoomed in,…

Shot from below, the memorial’s three bronze wings blot out most of the sky. A man in a grey hoodie sat on the granite wall at the base, hunched over something in his lap, tiny against the thing behind him. He’d picked the one spot where the monument stops being a monument and turns into…

The fireworks went up from a barge moored out in Cobh harbour, and the launch point sits right there at water level, a small fountain of sparks and smoke below the main burst. Unfortunately the barge drifted with the current, and it ended up quite far down the town, probably away from the main crowds!

The ugly monstrosity that was an extension to the Loretto School in Youghal, in 2023. It was finally demolished in January this year.

The pharmacist in the window is beaming and offering to help. “Pop in, I can help & advise.” I don’t think this man checking his phone is a customer.

The performing leprechauns are back, sitting next to the new raised flower beds that were installed by Cork City Council recently. They love the attention but they are loud.

The stone warehouses along Custom House Quay have sat behind their green doors for as long as I can remember. Behind them the glass offices construction of the Railyard Apartments tower climbs up, with two cranes over the work. Two eras. Old and new.

Opera Lane on a Tuesday morning, and three people in a row are looking at their phones.

Three red things line up in this one. First the red arrow, a sticker on one of the big cardboard boxes in the Arnotts window display, pointing across at her. Then a red and white stick taped to the glass at an angle, aimed down at her too. And the red case on her phone,…

Christmas Eve in Cork, and the fog had settled over the south channel of the Lee and stayed put all morning. It was 2005, and the banks of the river looked very different. The old tax office still stood on Sullivan’s Quay, and the Peace Park opposite still had trees and overgrown shrubs hanging over…

It was announced a few months ago that St. Augustine’s Church in Cork City would close on July 12th, with a final mass at 11:30 that morning. I arrived around 11:20, curious to see what it would be like, only to see every space on every bench taken and people standing at the back of…