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.

Last week, an old friend of mine (not in the sense of seriously elderly, although he’s no stripling), Mr Kevin Hanly, a man with a great eye for the workings of nature and natural things, was abroad alone on his boat in Courtmacsherry Bay in West Cork, (something a seriously old person would not do), fishing for bass, writes Damien Enright

The sun comes out, and the butterflies follow. Few and far between, we saw only three on a 6km walk, two small heaths and a solitary speckled wood spiralling about under some beeches.

DUCKLINGS go to college? The sight of a troop of ducklings streaming in line after their mother through the gates of University College Cork had a definite, sentimental charm, but I saw it not so much as an endearing picture of “adorable, fluffy little creatures” seeking knowledge, as a testament to Nature’s unfailing geography of survival.

I arrive back from the Canary Islands, with a brief stop-over in London, and have messages on my telephone which make me wonder if there is more exotic wildlife to be seen in West Cork than in many far-flung places.

A ROCK falling on one’s head is a hazard rarely encountered on Irish roads. However, in the Canary Islands it is a distinct possibility on back roads not yet endowed with EU grants.