AT NIGHT, here on the island of La Gomera in the Canaries, we hear the pardelas — Cory’s Shearwaters — mewling as they cruise high above the lights of the harbour; their calls echoing against the sheer rock face that rises 1,000m directly above the port beach.

TO SEE green shoots rise from blackened branches in the vast swathes of forest destroyed by wildfires in La Gomera in the Canary Islands in August 2012 was at once a joy and a reassurance. 

The recurrent showers of recent weeks has had us crouching under bushes for shelter.

THE soldier stones that top the seashore wall for a kilometre or more from the east to the west end of this village are draped with the red stems and tiny purple flowers of ivy-leaved toadflax. If a lady could lift off this lacery of plant life and drape it on her shoulders, she would, it is sure, be wearing a shawl better than any designed by the top couturiers.

IT’S SUMMER again, whatever Met Éireann may say about it beginning in June. 

FOR a superb outdoor experience, salted with a bit of history, none will serve better on this Bank Holiday Monday than a coastal walk from picturesque Courtmacsherry village to Coolbawn (aka Blind Strand) on the Seven Heads.

Tourist Information Office birdwatching guides to the Republic of Cyprus and Turkish-Occupied Northern Cyprus (Kibris) are second to none, full of information and beautiful photographs. Each of the two Cypruses want to attract birders, says Damien Enright.

After a fine dinner at our home last week, our guest (and chef for the evening) was (figuratively) in full flight and turned to the squirmy subject of earthworms.

Last week, I wrote about the increasing destruction of habitats in marginal areas, where, in the cause of creating more grassland for more cattle to make more beef and now more milk — bedrock is smashed and removed and the land scraped of all the wild and hardy vegetation that has evolved there since the last Ice Age.

THE chatter of rock-breakers have long since replaced the hoarse cries of corncrakes in marginal farming areas of Ireland, writes Damien Enright