Long-Tailed Tits
In my final months in Ireland before moving to the US eight, nine years ago, I was unhappy about something. Granted I hadn’t particularly tried very hard, but nonetheless I had never seen a Long-tailed Tit.
Blue Tits, Great Tits, and Coal Tits were common enough, especially in the days of milk bottles on steps when the foil top wouldn’t be enough to save the cream at the top. And the Long-Tailed fellas were supposed to be common too, but I just didn’t see them.
They’re beautiful little birds, a fluffy pile of pink and brown fuzz with their distinctive white faces and their long tails of course, and this made me all the more unhappy at them never popping into my sightline.
So when I ended my residence of many years in Dublin’s northside I took up home in an empty house near the mountains where I painted while waiting for my visa to come through. And then in the final days, in the calm quiet of winter, four Long-Tailed Tits came up to the window and fluttered away as if waving goodbye.
Well, this morning with a gorgeous sun blasting through the early mist as I stood on a scaffold with a paintbrush in hand, I saw my first Long-Tailed Tits since that time 9 years ago. 8 Long-Tailed Tits flickered along a nearby hedge and then up to me on the scaffold.
Birds are great.
Eolaí gan Fhéile:
You’re right. They are very endearing. It gladdens the heart to look at these wee critters.
How long are you working in England for?
Until Christmas Eve when I then fly back to Dublin Sam. And then it should be only days before I fly back to the US to go get Dog-dog.
What a cute tit!
Do you have to keep the dog locked up in quarantine, Eolai, or can she come right home with you from the airport?
Yeah! Dog-dog’s coming home! Prepare the fatted cat.
Medbh - not quarantine - that’s why Dog-dog had to stay behind when I left the US. In order to avoid quarantine 6 months following the blood test, following the rabies shot, following the implanting of a European standard microchip, had to pass. That, and more, is now the case - today in fact - so now there’s just a ton of more legal hoops and procedures and she can come almost straight home.
My understanding is that without seeing the dog, the dog is taken from the airport to the quarantine facility in Dublin (not too far as it happens) and there the dog is scanned and tested before being handed over to you. I’m told that the dog should leave the airport within an hour of landing and I should be able to bring her home from the quarantine facility after about an hour of being there.
But then I could write several posts on what I’ve been told - and I probably will.
Primal - yes. I’ve aways wondered what the fat cattle family do upon the return of their wayward calf.
I am so glad you and your buddy are going to be reunited!
As to the long-tailed tits, I read that they travel in small, excitable flocks. What a charming picture that makes! Come to think about it, that makes them quite like some of the Irish traditional music fans that I know…