Last Monday, as I left the house for a late night walk, a hundred or more woodlice were climbing the walls outside my front door. 

Is it possible that your correspondent has come across a colony of mining bees of a species hitherto foreign to our shores? Unlikely!

Just beyond the breaking surf at the White Strand on the Great Blasket island, seals were standing up in the water to get a better look at us humans. 

OCTOPUSES, as I wrote in my August 24 column, are highly intelligent and learn quickly.

The most outstanding feature of this Irish summer — coming to an ‘official’ end this very day — has been the lack of winged insects.

IN THE sporadic appearances of summer last week, anglers and their boats went to sea, and even the ocean sunfish were basking, writes Donal Hickey

IN THESE days of slate-hopping downpours, I sometimes wonder if the heron standing on our balcony is simply brainless or if it revels in the weather. It makes no attempt to find shelter.

Great hullabaloo on Courtmacsherry pier the other morning with dozens of boys and girls (and old boys and old girls) hauling onion bags stuffed with fish debris out of the sea and shaking the shore crabs hanging onto them into buckets, fish boxes and barrels.

MY PAL, a sprightly walker and fisherman who has moved to Spain, got a bit of a land when he flew into Dublin Airport and went to rent a car.

IN THE southwest, the summer has, so far, been indifferent. “Summery In-justice!” I’d call it. While the midlands have their share of sun-blessed days, here, on the holiday coast, when it isn’t raining buckets, a sea mist blots out the sun.