Twirling above Killarney's lakes`The hind turns clockwise, rapidly and tightly within her own lengthSat Dec 19 1998 - 00:00
The light of LuciferON dank and sunless afternoons in the west, I get pleasure from colours half-buried in the gloom, colours that glow with their…Sat Dec 12 1998 - 00:00
Voles away!Whatever about the well-run compost-heaps of suburban gardens (neatly-layered binfuls of tea-leaves, dead chrysanthemums and …Sat Dec 05 1998 - 00:00
Jellyfish and climate changeAfter the mid-November storms, the strand offered disappointing beachcombing - a tangle of weed from the offshore kelp forest…Sat Nov 28 1998 - 00:00
The raven resurgentA peak of reckless pleasure in the life of our small black dog is to swim the channel to the strand, make a racing circle or …Sat Nov 21 1998 - 00:00
Song of the grey sealA full moon over Inishturk is the prize for getting up before dawnSat Nov 14 1998 - 00:00
A moose - loose . . .The latest in a long line of hail-squalls rears up above the islands, fills the sky, and hurls itself upon the house with a ferocity…Sat Nov 07 1998 - 00:00
Eye On NatureOn a recent holiday in Ireland, my wife and I were thrilled to see our first peregrine falcon, along the cliffs of AchillSat Oct 31 1998 - 00:00
From the Northern passagesEach October, the whooper swans from Iceland make their Irish landfall somewhere around Malin Head at the tip of the Inishowen…Sat Oct 24 1998 - 01:00
Natural forecastersIt was a glossy autumn morning, polished by a keen east windSat Oct 17 1998 - 01:00
Kingdom for a deerAt this point in October you would swear the hillside rowans of Connacht knew just where to stand for the sun to catch their …Sat Oct 10 1998 - 01:00
Eye On NatureI have had a wasps' nest under the slates of my kitchen roof throughout the summer and their traffic remains incessant like aircraft…Sat Oct 03 1998 - 01:00
Dark villain or easy scapegoat?When humans decide to make a villain of a bird, it helps no end if it is sinister to look at and has a disreputable private life…Sat Oct 03 1998 - 01:00
Earthy stuff . . .The first winds off the sea were only middling fierce, but strong enough to pluck the leaves from the hillside's hawthornsSat Sept 26 1998 - 01:00
Special reserveThe hole in the ferny floor of the wood had been scooped out by two big, sharp-nailed paws, but the debris of papery tatters …Sat Sept 19 1998 - 01:00
Eye on NatureOn a recent visit to a house in Donegal which had been closed up since February, we found the window sills of the breakfast room…Sat Sept 12 1998 - 01:00
Darters and hawkers all a-flickerA rare second day of sunshine found the acre a-flicker with dragonflies, cruising around the hedges with a stiff rustle of wings…Sat Sept 12 1998 - 01:00
How rare is rare?Clochar na gCon (Foxrock as Bearla) is a breezy undulation of bog, well up the hill from the bungalows and buzzing traffic of…Sat Sept 05 1998 - 01:00
Tree traumaIn my bow-and-arrow years the only convenient forests were round the houses where the ancients lived: old misters and their small…Sat Aug 29 1998 - 01:00
Eye On NatureIn early August a red squirrel appeared in my garden. I had never seen either a red or a grey squirrel here beforeSat Aug 29 1998 - 01:00
A New York love storyRed Tails in Love, by Marie Winn, Bloomsbury, 307pp, £13.99 in UKTue Aug 25 1998 - 01:00
Seaweed richesIt is wonderful - I think so, anyway - that the rocky shores of Mayo and Maine, with the whole Atlantic Ocean between them, should…Sat Aug 22 1998 - 01:00
Growing our ownFor much of the summer, a straggly clump of plants between the garlic and the calabrese put up a host of two-foot stems bearing…Sat Aug 15 1998 - 01:00
Watching the bottlenosesThis summer's restless seas and blurred horizons have not been good for whale-and-dolphin watchers, muffled up on headlands or…Sat Aug 08 1998 - 01:00
Special forces for tackling aliensWhen plants lose their proper place in the world, usually by human agency, they can seem possessed by a berserk and exponential…Sat Aug 01 1998 - 01:00
`A lollipop forest is better than none'I love the way a young tree sketches out its final formSat Jul 25 1998 - 01:00
Stagnant maze of interior`I come home these nights under such light, alleys of softly glowing elder in whose flower the bridal whites discolour, the freshness…Sat Jul 18 1998 - 01:00
Ferns for allThis rain-forest summer has been great for the pteridophytes, as if a great glass bell had been set over Connacht to conjure …Sat Jul 11 1998 - 01:00
Bengorm's black eyeAt this mid-point in summer, even the worst scars of Connacht's overgrazed hills have taken on a cosmetic haze of green, like…Sat Jul 04 1998 - 01:00
Eye On NatureRecently when driving on the Portlaoise bypass, I saw a bird of prey hovering and then it turned from the road and I saw the …Sat Jul 04 1998 - 01:00
Passages of wayside beautyThe roads of Connemara are launched into one of the several purple passages of summerSat Jun 27 1998 - 01:00
Eye On NatureIn late May, I saw a flock of gannets diving on a shoal of spent herrings at the back of Kilcummin pier in Killala Bay, about…Sat Jun 20 1998 - 01:00
New birds by the hedge-loadThe acre's maze of windbreak hedges leaves plenty of room for surpriseSat Jun 20 1998 - 01:00
Someone new on the acreJune has touched some wild nerve in the herb garden, so that comfrey, valerian, mullein, clary, have rushed up into shoulder-…Sat Jun 13 1998 - 01:00
Sexy smell of hawthornWhat's all this about hawthorn blossom smelling of sex? Geoffrey Grigson may have started itSat Jun 06 1998 - 01:00
Steady As A BomberImpressionist scenes in the garden these mornings, new contre-jour RO]planes of colour and lightSat May 30 1998 - 01:00
Holding the biosphere togetherAt the brink of summer, the garden pond attains a chaste and balanced sort of beauty that later will drown itself in leavesSat May 16 1998 - 01:00
Eye On NatureA hawfinch (photograph above) graced my garden for several days after April 23rdSat May 16 1998 - 01:00
Blow-ins breed along the BlackwaterSomewhere "in southern Ireland" (in fact, on a leafy stretch of the River Blackwater valley, which still doesn't tell you more…Sat May 09 1998 - 01:00
Thousands of birds an hourThe solitude of the strand is shared these mornings with the sandwich terns, fresh in from West AfricaSat May 02 1998 - 01:00
No welcome for noisy tenantsEvery day now, for a couple of weeks, I have taken a pole to a young spruce tree beside the house and vandalised the nest the…Sat Apr 18 1998 - 01:00
Training marine paramedicsThe swan was a lone white dot, upright but unmoving, out in the middle of the grassy plain of the duachSat Apr 11 1998 - 01:00
A wealth of old oaklandIn Brackloon Wood the birches are in leaf, a fresh green mist stealing through the clearings to heal their raw disorderSat Apr 04 1998 - 01:00
Eye On NatureCan you suggest trees and shrubs for a city garden to encourage birdsSat Mar 21 1998 - 00:00
A ripple of whoopersWhen 12 whooper swans fly up out of a marsh it is an event, a disturbance, a hullabaloo: all those white wings conjured suddenly…Sat Mar 21 1998 - 00:00
A sea change in the rhythm of lifeThere's a strong smell of spring off the seaSat Mar 14 1998 - 00:00
