The hunt, the heart and the hare of the dogAnother Life: 'The peculiar bevels and bulges which sculpt the head of a hare sweep up to support the twin, twitching columns…Sat Feb 12 2005 - 00:00
Moving in strange waysAnother Life: The storms left great stretches of the strand heaped with glistening kelp - Laminaria of science, sea-rods of …Sat Feb 05 2005 - 00:00
Soaring choughs brave the stormy weatherAnother Life Ever since its installation on the kitchen window sill, our RF Animation Weather Forecast gizmo has promised nothing…Sat Jan 29 2005 - 00:00
Columban Father finds the devil in the detailAnother Life: It's getting on for 20 years since Bill McKibben's book The End of Nature summed up our fears of global warming…Sat Jan 15 2005 - 00:00
A world of shimmering shades of greenAnother Life: Now's the one time in the year when I can be seduced by rural illumination; when even that satellite view of the…Sat Dec 18 2004 - 00:00
The holly, the ivy and the corkscrew hazelAnother Life: It takes an eye for foliage as "product" to decide that while mistletoe may, indeed, be very popular, it "needs…Sat Dec 11 2004 - 00:00
Orange roughy in the depths of despairAnother Life: Up in the dark on stormy mornings, an ocean squall lashing at the windows, I find that the BBC shipping forecast…Sat Oct 16 2004 - 01:00
Was there a land bridge across the Irish Sea?Another Life This month's proposition, from a scientist at the University of Ulster (UU), that there was never a land bridge…Sat Sept 25 2004 - 01:00
On the threat of an alien mussel invasionAnother Life: The boreen's clumps of purple loosestrife are reaching the last flowers on their spikes, whereupon the singing…Sat Sept 18 2004 - 01:00
Grey squirrel's bite is worse for the barkAnother Life: One day in the summer of 1911, a wedding present from the Duke of Buckingham was ceremoniously opened on the lawn…Sat Sept 11 2004 - 01:00
Grey squirrel's bite is worse for the barkAnother Life: One day in the summer of 1911, a wedding present from the Duke of Buckingham was ceremoniously opened on the lawn…Sat Sept 04 2004 - 01:00
Putting down roots on city rooftopsAnother Life: The almost voluptuous relish with which our country towns now garland themselves in flowers for the summer, and…Sat Jul 17 2004 - 01:00
Y's venerable oaks stand in time's eyeAnother Life: It was back in the 1980s that a cigar-box arrived in the postSat Jul 03 2004 - 01:00
Orchids will have them on their kneesAnother Life: The first and only orchid I picked and brought home, from a grassy bank in Connemara, was the elegant, ivory spire…Sat Jun 05 2004 - 01:00
Polytunnel promises a paradise in plasticAnother Life: Our little lean-to greenhouse, tucked half into the ground 20 years ago as a way of ducking the ocean wind, has…Sat May 15 2004 - 01:00
Oh for a 'juicy and jostling shock' of bluebellsAnother Life: The early-morning boreen offers, on one side, field banks smothered with primroses; on the other, meadows full…Sat May 01 2004 - 01:00
Shelling out for the colour purpleAnother Life: Even an April shower can sting when it swoops in, slate-grey, from the islands with a northerly wind behind it…Sat Apr 24 2004 - 01:00
The oak and the ash and the bonny elm treeBud-burst has caught me on the hop this spring, at least among the southern trees on the acreSat Apr 10 2004 - 01:00
Keeping watch on the new world disorderAnother Life: That everything in nature is connected to everything else is a useful if tantalising truism, not all that helpful…Sat Mar 13 2004 - 00:00
Swans whoop it up in lakeshore pas de deuxAnother Life: With the wind gone safely north and tucked behind the ridge, there has been a sudden stillness to the hillside…Sat Mar 06 2004 - 00:00
The making of our mackerel industryAnother Life: Slowly we're mapping the sea - not just the canyons, mountains and plains of the seabed, but all the invisible…Sat Feb 28 2004 - 00:00
Annual froggy flattening and ravens on a rollAnother Life: The frogs have trampled down the dead grasses and rushes that hid the pond's water for months, creating a firm…Sat Feb 21 2004 - 00:00
Countryside council a timely ideaAnother Life: The countryside of my East Sussex childhood was of rare and noble quality, from the airy, whale-backed hills of…Sat Feb 07 2004 - 00:00
Ulster conservationists say 'let the hare sit'On its way between ditches (a way clearly notched in the top of each bank), the hare freezes upright in the middle of the boreen…Sat Jan 17 2004 - 00:00
Medieval and colonial demesnes uncoveredPalimpsest is a word I like to dust off now and thenSat Nov 08 2003 - 00:00
Medieval and colonial demesnes uncoveredPalimpsest is a word I like to dust off now and thenSat Nov 01 2003 - 00:00
From the bottom of my arteriesAt a year or so older than the 70 I am now, my father did a satisfying day's digging in the garden, went to bed early and died…Mon Oct 20 2003 - 01:00
On the origin of the dove speciesDove-grey can sound a sad sort of colour, but it gives a pale and polished beauty to the birds that flash down through our trees…Sat Sept 06 2003 - 01:00
Keeping the balance of old and newAnother Life It is the leaves that tell a plant when to flower, measuring out the length of days to keep to a near-constant …Sat Jul 26 2003 - 01:00
Pollen dating paints picture of our pastAnother Life The feathery heads of flowering grasses quite change the look of the unmown bits of countryside, dusting over the…Sat Jul 12 2003 - 01:00
A changing coastal cultureMemoir In a world of whirling change, a memoir by a man in his nineties is almost bound to chronicle "a way of life that is …Sat Jul 12 2003 - 01:00
Cultivating a new conservationANOTHER LIFE: For those who would love to take farmers at their word as "guardians of the countryside", these are not encouraging…Sat Feb 08 2003 - 00:00
Why this is a horse of a different colourANOTHER LIFE: Among the marine bric-a-brac that has followed me around for half a lifetime is a dried Pacific seahorse, its …Sat Nov 02 2002 - 00:00
'Green, how I love you, green!'ANOTHER LIFE: It's some time since I peered out at cock-crow - much longer since I woke to a full antiphon of three or four …Sat Sept 21 2002 - 01:00
Where wild geese flyANOTHER LIFE: In the High Arctic, summer is already fadingSat Aug 17 2002 - 01:00
Herbs, the IMB and Master Jon GardenerANOTHER LIFE: A gusty close to May left the lanes dusted with confetti: petals of hawthorn flung from extravagantly bridal hedges…Sat Jun 01 2002 - 01:00
The dolphins and tuna that don't get awayANOTHER LIFE : When the giant trawler Atlantic Dawn, fresh from Norway's shipyards, made its triumphant homecoming voyage up…Sat May 04 2002 - 01:00
When the wetlands are the last refuge for wildlifeSunshine glints on frogspawn bunched like bubble-wrap in the pond, warms the creamy breast-feathers of the song-thrush on my …Sat Feb 23 2002 - 00:00
The rise and fall of the starlingANOTHER LIFE: A couple of fistfuls of spruce seedlings, set close in the middle of the acre in its windier days, today make …Sat Feb 09 2002 - 00:00
Out of the north Atlantic depthsANOTHER LIFE: Up to last Sunday's Force 10, the depressions spiralling up the Atlantic from behind the television weatherman…Sat Feb 02 2002 - 00:00
Natural works of art bogged down in historyANOTHER LIFE: An image for January in Mayo could be a bleak and spiky rampart of bog-deal beneath an ochre tea-time skySat Jan 19 2002 - 00:00
Indoor indulgenceIn the lorry that moved our less presentable effects from a Dublin suburb in 1977 (garden shed, dismantled; empty wooden barrels…Sat Dec 29 2001 - 00:00
Oh! to be a stick insectSmall flickers of left-over colour enliven a garden now settling down, at last, to sleep: little flames of nasturtiums, a sunny…Sat Dec 15 2001 - 00:00
The patter of tiny feetThe first chill winds bring a patter of tiny feet behind the plasterboard that lines the old part of the houseSat Dec 08 2001 - 00:00
A journey on foot through space and timeThe bald king Mweelrea, or Muilrea, according to one's culture, hunches up against the sun these mornings, keeping us in shadow…Sat Dec 01 2001 - 00:00
Welcoming the whooper swan with whoops of delightThe sun should always be at this angle, raking the hillside for every rock and hollow, laser-lighting every ewe, combing the …Sat Nov 24 2001 - 00:00
Why the world is no longer an oyster for native molluscsThe ocean never seems bigger than at this time of yearSat Nov 17 2001 - 00:00
Squirrelling away knowledge for a rainy daySome of the happier younger schoolchildren in Northern Ireland are out in the autumn woods just now, pretending to be red squirrels…Sat Nov 10 2001 - 00:00
Shimmering brushstrokes float across the skyWhen the moon rises over the ridge these dark nights, its radiance precedes it as a brilliant glow beyond the profile of the …Sat Nov 03 2001 - 00:00
